A Ten-Month Willa

The last week of May was a hectic one.  It was the last week of school, which is always hectic trying to wrap up the year, move a classroom (I've moved classrooms almost every year that I've been teaching, so for me, it goes with the territory), get mountains of late work corrected and grades finished up.  This year, however, we also had three little girls battling ear infections (Willa's led to a fever of 105!!), Willa was teething, Evaline's eye doctor's appointment, and we were getting ready for a trip to Omaha, NE where my brother was getting married (more on that later, hopefully soon).  So, with all of that, I forgot about taking Willa's 9 month photo.  And actually, if she didn't have a doctor's appointment, I would have forgotten about her turning 9 months at all.  So...here I am to update at 10 months instead.  Some of the stats will be a tad old (well, a month old), but I'm pretty sure that she hasn't grown much.

So, doctor stats first: She weighs 19 pounds and is at the 60th percentile.  She is   inches tall, and is at the 15th percentile.  Her head is still enormous, coming in at the 94th percentile once again.  She is just now at ten months starting to wear a few 12 month things, but they fit her on the big size.  Her nine month clothes for the most part still fit perfect...so while she appears to be a big, chunky baby, it's somewhat of an illusion.  She's not really big for her age, she's just a little "short-round".

She's a champ at sleeping and eating.  She goes to bed at about 6:30 in the evening and gets up around 7:00 am (although this morning she got up at 7:45!).  We always put her down awake after some snuggles and she goes right to sleep.  The same is true for her naps, she takes two naps, that last between and hour and two and half hours each.  She's taking four bottles a day, and drinks around 5 - 7 ounces.  She eats breakfast (baby cereal mixed with applesauce or pureed pears or peaches and a touch of cinnamon), lunch and dinner.  For lunch and dinner she has said "Enough!" to baby food: she's simply refused to eat it.  She purses her lips and won't open her mouth, pushes the spoon away as it approaches her mouth, and then slaps at the tray on her high chair.  She was very clearly telling us that she wanted real food like the rest of us.  So, we obliged.  And so for lunch and dinner she has (cut into tiny pieces): tuna, grilled cheese, turkey, or roast beef sandwiches, a wide variety of fruit, green beans, broccoli (her favorite), asparagus, zucchini, peppers, grilled chicken, pasta, pizza, steak, pork chops, and so on...seriously, whatever we are having for dinner, she has too.

She's not crawling yet, but she doesn't really have a reason to.  For a couple of reasons: 1) if she ever looks like she needs or wants something out of her reach, two other little people usually very quickly get it for her; 2) if those other two little people aren't around and she can't reach something that she wants, she just finds something else to play with. She isn't completely immobile, though; she scoots around on her bottom.  She's a very effective spinner, and will slowly scoot on her bottom to somewhere that she wants to be (within a two-foot or so radius). She's a very laid-back little person who is very willing to go with the flow.  If we change her routine, she just rolls with it - whether that is staying up late, or having to eat an hour later than normal, or whatever.  She always wants to be where the action is, if she is left in a room alone (lets face it - she's not crawling yet, so she'll stay put...and sometimes you just have to go to the bathroom) she immediately lets everyone hear about it.  She knows exactly what she wants and she's not hesitant to let us know.  She has different cries/yells/yelps/squawks, etc to let us know how she's feeling or what she needs.  She waves hello and good bye.  She enjoys a good game of patty-cake, and coming in for a snuggle with mom or dad.  She loves music and dancing. She is happiest playing in a room with her big sisters. Particularly Cora.  I've said it before, but these two have a very special relationship.  I think that Evaline might be at a bit of a loss as to what to do with or how to play with a little baby...but Cora dotes on her.  No one can make her laugh quite like Cora can.

Overall, at 10 months little Willa is pretty awesome.  I think we'll keep her :-)

Anisometropia

At the end of April a group from the University of Iowa Children's Hospital called 'KidVision' went to Evaline and Cora's daycare and did a vision screening on all the kids who hadn't had one previously.  This meant that they did not test Cora's eyes, since she was already in glasses, but they did test Evaline's.   When they got home from school that day, Evaline proudly showed us her sticker (that she got, but Cora didn't), and Cora proudly told us that Evaline had failed the test.  We promptly blew off Cora's comment as something that she was saying either a) incorrectly, or b) to be mean because she didn't get a sticker but Evaline did.  Also, when they'd been to their pediatrician in November Evaline did perfectly fine on the "stand on the masking tape and tell me if you can see this picture at the end of the hall" test.

Towards the middle/end of May, we got the official results of the screening, and found that Evaline did, in fact, fail one of the tests and she was recommended to see an eye doctor to confirm the results and get treatment if needed.

As it turns out, Evaline has an uncommon eye condition called "Anisometropia."  While this is an uncommon condition, it isn't all that uncommon for preemie babies.  Although Evaline was born at 37 weeks and was healthy and didn't need to the NICU or anything, and although Cora was not given this label, Evaline was named a "preemie" when she was born; I'm sure due to something developmental, and probably the fact that she was 4 lbs, 4oz at birth (and, she looked kinda funny....sorta like an anorexic bird...in the cutest way possible, of course).

Ok, so "Anisometropia": basically her left eye sees just fine.  Almost 20/20 vision.  Her right eye is near-sighted.  Not terribly near-sighted (nothing like Cora's eyes), but that doesn't really matter.  The brain doesn't like to get this mixed message.  It has a hard time dealing with one eye seeing clearly and one eye seeing blurry; so it is shutting off the message from the right (blurry) eye.  There isn't anything wrong with the eye itself (except for the near-sightedness), but she's going blind in her right eye.  The receptors between the eye and brain are shutting down because the brain finds the mixed messages to be obnoxious.

Yikes!!

Fortunately, if its caught early enough (like, before age 9ish) it is something that can be corrected and the brain will reconnect with that eye.  The first thing to try is glasses, which we picked up this morning.  Hopefully, the glasses alone will correct this: presenting the brain with two clear messages will strengthen those receptors and restore any lost vision.  We go back in early August to see if it worked or not.  If not, she will have to wear an eye patch over her left (good) eye for awhile to force the brain to use her right (bad) eye.  With any luck, though, she won't need that.

So both the twins are in glasses by the age of four.  Oy.  Evaline was ecstatic - she has been so terribly jealous of Cora's glasses for the past year and a half.

And here she is...

Sunday Funnies

On Thursday night, as Ian was drying Cora off after her bath:

Ian: “I like you. You’re nice.”

Cora: “Thanks. You’re nice, too. Sometimes I’m nice. But sometimes I don’t share with Evaline.”

Ian: “Well, sometimes I don’t share, either. And sometimes I’m mean and don’t say things as nice as I should. I’m sorry when I do that.”

Cora: “You just need to say ‘oh, pickles’ instead of the naughty words.”

Ian: “I’ll keep trying on that.”

Cora: “Well, you can just say ‘oh, pickles’ second. You can say the naughty words first. I know you really like those words.”

Sunday Funnies

Cora: Why are you in here just starin' at a book?  Daddy said you were reading.

Apparently it only counts as "reading" if you are doing it out loud.  :-)

Welcome Home, Uncle Dave!!!

After almost a year away, Uncle Dave is home from Afghanistan!!  

We badly wanted to go his homecoming in Lincoln, NE...but they came home the Thursday before our Spring Break, and unfortunately we couldn't get off of work (I have no days left after my maternity leave).  

I intended to post this a week ago...but never got the photos uploaded off my camera :-(

Soooooo......in lieu of our actually being there...

Recent Baking

So...I stopped keeping up my other blog where I recorded recipes and pictures of those recipes.  I'm kind of bummed that I stopped doing this - it was a really, really handy recipe file for me.  It was a great way to keep track of the things that we've made and enjoyed: complete with pictures to jog my memory of the specific dishes (cookbooks with pictures are always the best - this is sorta like that).  BUT...it takes a lot of time to take the pictures, upload the pictures, write the post, etc.  I'd kinda been slacking off, but about the time I got pregnant with Willa my energy for it really dropped.  While it doesn't even begin to compare to some of my friends early pregnancy experiences (which consisted of major sickness), I didn't feel well for the whole first trimester.  Everything made me feel nauseous, I was incredibly tired all the time, and my general disposition was down in the dumps.  All of that passed, but I never picked up that blog again and now...running after these three little ones, teaching a new AP class, etc - I can hardly keep up with this one.  And it kinda makes me sad.

The girls and I have spent some time in the kitchen lately, though, and I do want those projects recorded.

Here's a cake that I made for some good friends' son's 2nd birthday.  (The design didn't come out of my head - I saw it on...wait for it...Pinterest, but it was just a picture with no website, so I don't know where to attribute the design.)

 

 

It is a yellow cake (from the red & white plaid Better Homes & Gardens cookbook) with jello frosting, only I added a couple tablespoons of meringue powder to help it stablize.  I used a grass decorators tip (Wilton #234) for Cookie's "fur," and the eyes are Ritz crakers dipped in almond bark (the center of the eyes are just some melted chocolate chips).  The chocolate chip cookies are homemade, too...although they are a frequent dessert at my house, apparently they never made it on the blog so I don't have a link there.

C & E are acquiring my love for baking (yea!).  And for Valentine's Day we made some mini-cupcakes:

I love mini-cupcakes, because you can eat two without feeling guilty and they have a much better frosting-to-cake ratio. I just used the chocolate cake recipe from the BH&G cookbook and filled mini-muffin tins.  I used my standard cookie scoop to fill the muffin tins, and they came out the perfect size (once scoop per cupcake). 

The frosting here is pretty unique - its a fantastic substitute for standard buttercreme, or whipped creme frosting.  It's a cross between the two actually.  It has the texture of a whipped creme frosting, but is more like buttercreme, but not as sweet.  I think it pairs perfectly with the rich chocolate cake.  (However, my mom thought it wasn't sweet enough.)  This is the same frosting that I use for Oatmeal Creme Pies.  The girls did the sprinkle-decorating.

Six Month Photo Dump

Willa is six months old!!  Actually, she was six months old almost a week ago but we just went to her doctor's appointment today.  As suspected, she's pretty perfect.

Since we're at the 6th month mark, let's take a look back at some of her growth pictures (I didn't take them for nothing, after all):

Right now Willa weights 15 lbs, 15 oz.  (less than Cora did at this age, but more than Evaline) which puts her at the 44th percentile for weight, she is 25 1/2 inches long (1/4 inch longer than C&E were) which is the 29th percentile, and her HUGE noggin is in the 97th percentile!!

Willa is rolling from tummy to back like its her job, she hates lying on her tummy more than anything and has no interest in being there.  Ever.  She has rolled from back to tummy, twice, but has since decided that it isn't worth the effort.  She is well on her way to sitting solo, getting a bit better at balancing on her hips everyday. It takes a lot of strength to hold up that huge head of hers.  She's pretty keen on her bottle (and if you catch a glimpse of her thighs, you will have no doubt of this) but has very little interest in solids.  She's tried cereal, peas, green beans, carrots and apples...but nothing has yet tempted her palate. She's reaching and grabbing for things. She's quiet and observant, but she loves to be around people.  Generally, she will be happy if she's positioned in the room where she can see everything going on - but only if everyone stays where she can see them (she gets cranky when left alone). She loves her floor gym, her giraffe-blanket, her crinkly giraffe toy, her "O" ball, and anything that she grab on to and put in her mouth.  She loves watching her big sisters act goofy (unfortunately, however, the very things (sounds, actions, etc) that elicit peals of laughter and squeals of glee from Willa are....super annoying to Ian and me. Because of Willa's response, it's cute the first ten times or so, but after that.....).  She goes to bed around 6:30 at night and on school days we wake her up around 6:00 am but on weekends she'll sleep until 7:00 or 7:15.  (I'm a huge advocate for early sleep training.) Her naps are good, but inconsistent - two or three a day, anywhere from one to three hours at a stretch.

And that's Willa.

And here's Willa, too:

Just hanging out, being her smiley self

It's hard to tell, but they're all wearing sheep-themed footy jammies

She looks as though she's all excited to eat.  Looks are deceiving.

Shortly before a nose-dive.

Another happy baby girl.

Cora's teaching her to use her computer.

This was her first bite of cereal.

Watching Mom and Dad fold laundry.

I've had some questions about who does she look like here lately....here are some pics...let's see if you can guess who is in each one:

Picture A:

Picture B:

                                      

Picture C:

Picture D:

Picture E: 

                                                   

Answers: 

A: Cora, B: Willa, C: Evaline, D: Merry  E: Ian(I'm a little older, and Ian's a little younger, but I had limited access to pictures from the same age). 

So?  How'd you do?