Sadie's Four Month Checkup

Sadie did great at her checkup appointment today. She was pretty happy about the whole thing-- until the barrage of vaccinations came. Meanwhile, Jake was busy using the reflex hammer on all parts of my body to see what else besides a leg would move when hammered.

Here are Sadie's stats:

Weight: 14 pounds, 4 ounces (65th percentile)
Height: 26 1/4 inches (97th percentile)
Head: 15 3/4 inches (25th percentile)

Normally I skip the head measurement, but I thought being in the 25th percentile was noteworthy. Her head seems perfectly normal-sized for her body, so it seems odd that 75 percent of other babies have larger heads than she does. Maybe that's why she's doing so well holding her head up - not having a giant melon-head to balance. Anyway, we love your cute little head, Sadie.

Besides her head-holding-up abilities and good eye contact, the Doc was impressed with her long eyelashes. I'm not sure what benefit that has, but maybe she can save a few bucks on mascara when she gets older.

We're so proud of our little four-month-old Sadie. She started rolling over about a week ago, and she's been having fun in her bouncy chair and activity mat. She's still a big cuddle-bug, and hardly fusses at all as long as someone is making eye contact with her. She does miss our company at night, and makes sure we know she does, but overall she's the happiest, sweetest baby and more than a few people have commented that she is a mini-Ali.

Skeered

Last night, about 9pm, just after putting Jake down, we got some thunder storms.

"Daddy! Jake skeered!"

"It's ok, you don't have to be scared of thunder. Thunder means rain, so everybody loves thunder. The grass loves thunder, the birds love thunder, Mommy loves thunder and Daddy loves thunder"

"No - JAKE loves thunder!"

"Oh, you love thunder too?"

"Jake love thunder TOO!.................Thunder all gone?"

Port Discovery

Today we drove up to Baltimore with the Jacksons to check out the Port Discovery children's museum. Here we are walking up the street to the museum. Everyone looks a little tired from the drive up, except for Jake who took a nap. That face is a pretty accurate measure of how excited he was to hang out with Jamie, Heidi, Cole, Miles and Dexter. He doesn't always get the boys' names right, but it is tricky since they all got matching haircuts a few weeks ago. We had so much fun at the museum, and then went over to Lexington Market, the oldest continually operated market in the U.S. -- it just celebrated it's 225th anniversary. It also happens to be the home of Faidely's, which is frequently voted as having the best crabcakes in Baltimore. And they were pretty amazing. Fun trip!

Chuck E. Cheese

Tonight was Jake's first excursion to Chuck E. Cheese. We were celebrating Dexter's fifth birthday (Dexter is the youngest of our friends the Jacksons' three boys.) Here he is at about two months celebrating with his parents at a Moroccan-themed birthday party we threw for Ali in 2002.

Chuck E. Cheese kind of reminds me of kid's cereal. It's addictive for the kids, and kind of disgusting for the adults. Cocoa Puffs? Cookie Crisps? Who's idea was it to create all these dessert-themed breakfast cereals? C.E.C. is similarly designed to appeal to kids while repelling adults with sticky floors and soggy microwaved pizza. And Jake got the full C.E.C. experience when I dipped a napkin in a big pitcher at the kids' table which I thought was water. Turns out I used Sprite to wipe away all the birthday cake on his face. But that gave him the sugar-crusted sticky layer that is required at C.E.C.

Jake loved it all. He loved being with the Jackson boys, he loved the games and rides, he loved the Chuck E. Cheese that visited our table, and he loved figuring out that he could...well.....let's just say, "assume ownership" of coins from other people's coin cups and put them in the slots of rides he wanted to get on.

Here he is on one of those rides:
Here are the girls: Heidi, Ali and Sadie

And here's the output from a "sketch artist" machine they have set up, which I was actually pretty impressed with:
One neat thing about C.E.C. is that when you arrive with your kids, you're all stamped with a matching serial number which they check when you leave to make sure you're taking home the right kids, and not just some kid that got stuck to you.

What a Week

We just got back home from a week down at Smith Mountain Lake and I'm trying to get mentally prepared to go back to work. I have today off, but luckily my boss called me at home today to help with that transition.

We had such a great vacation -- great weather, fun people, and lots of good food and laughter. Ali's parents hosted us, as well as 40 other people including most of Ali's family, half of Patrick's (husband of Ali's sister, Deni) family from Ireland, and my parents. We had met Patrick's family over in Ireland when he and Deni got married in 2005, but it was fun to get to know everyone a little better.

We had a first-rate fireworks show on the 4th, which Jake was about 40 percent impressed with and 60 percent scared of. He kept asking, "fireworks all done?" But the answer was always "no" since the show went on for about 45 minutes and finally Jake changed his question to "Night-nights?"

Besides the fireworks and party on the 4th, we had fun kayaking, water skiing, tubing behind the speedboat, JetSkiing, wakeboarding, hiking, geocaching, playing Bocce Ball, and relaxing a bit too. And, after several days of playing around in the shallow end of the lake, Jake finally worked up the courage to "swim" a little bit! He had his lifejacket on, but he was kicking and paddling between us and giggling and screaming "Jake Swimming!!"

It was a great week overall, but here are a few more highlights:

• Arjuna calling Sadie "Baby Shady"
• The rental guy saying he'd never seen that type of Seadoo flipped before
• Jake drinking three bowls of miso soup at the Hibachi grill
• To the barkeep at the Kings Point Pub: "I'll need 20 pints of Guinness, please"
• Patrick trying to teach Jake the Irish phrase, "How's she cuttin'" (equivalent to "How's it going"), and Jake responding, "No. Patrick's Cutting."
• Various versions of the American's trying to say "Jaysus Mary and Joseph!"
• Jake learning to SWIM!
  

Check out pictures by clicking here or the link to the right.

Sláinte!

Happy July 4th!

Greetings From Smith Mountain Lake!