Food, Glorious Food! Hot Sausage and Mustard!

...Or Rice Cereal and Mommy's Milk...

So Amillia is officially an herbivore. She has eaten rice cereal for five days now in celebration of being 5 months old. We waited until now just because we can... no real reason. We did notice that she looked really interested in us and what we were eating at meal times. She's also been eating her hands and putting everything to her mouth, so we figured we would show her what she's supposed to be putting in her mouth. I'm making her rice cereal (organic sweet brown rice purchased in bulk from Ozark Natural Foods, pulverized in the food processor, cooked in water, and thinned with breast milk) for now and she seems to like it so far. Of course, her first few bites/days she spit every bite out and we created a huge funny mess, but she seems to be getting a little better now. I can tell she likes it because she licks at the air and looks all around for the spoon when it's away from her mouth. Too cute! Here are some pictures of her new favorite activity.

A Home for the Bookworms



Today was our very first trip to the Bentonville library together. I hope that Amillia and I will make many more trips to the library. It was such a great trip. The people there were so nice and Millie was very polite. She just road along in her backpack carrier and made people smile. We got two books for me and three for her (since her's are so much shorter). We found a comfy chair in a corner and read a picture book about a farmer whose goat keeps accidently sitting on other animals. She's very attentive when I read which I love about her! The other books she got you might be wondering? Goldilocks & the Three Bears, The Fisherman and his Wife, and More than Meets the Eye: Seeing Art with All Five Senses (which was secretly for me). After we picked out our books we went to the cafe and had an almond Italian creme soda which was so tasty, and then sat on the veranda while we waited for Dad to finish working. A great afternoon, I say! Above is a pic from my phone of our adventure...

My sweet little... boy?

Today Millie and I went by to see Cousins Cole & Charis and while Bre was holding her namesake (Amillia is my sister's 1st name), Charis was brushing my hair. We had a little conversatoin that went something like this...

Charis: "Charis brush your hair, Brooke. Take out your holder [ponytail]."

Brooke: "Thank you."

Charis: "You have hair. Charis have hair. Mommy have hair."

Brooke: "Yes. We all have hair. Millie doesn't have much hair yet, but there's a little there."

Charis: "No, Millie doesn't have hair because she's a boy."

Brooke: "No, Millie is a girl, Charis. You and me and Mommy and Millie are all girls."

Charis: "No, Millie is a boy. He doesn't have any hair."

I then snorted and gave her a kiss.

Bre and I talked about how I'm going to start putting bows in her hair. Mom will be proud.

Here's an updated pic of our little drama queen, her little brother, and her cousin (ironically kind of dressed like a boy).

Brilliant!

So, I think I'm pretty smart most of the time (thus the self-indulgent name of this blog), but I came up with an excellent idea yesterday and thought I'd share. Now when you read this you will not exactly think it's all that brilliant, but if you try it you will see how wonderful this tactic that I discovered is. I've been the owner of an iPod since Christmas '07 courtesy of my mom & dad. (Shout out to the 'rents!) I don't listen to it very often because I forget about it. I have a "book on tape"... oh, I guess the "2000's" term would be "audio book"... whatever... of Prince Caspian from The Chronicles of Narnia loaded on my iPod. So when I'm doing housework, I will listen to a little bit of the story. I started this tonight when I was cleaning up the kitchen (Bryan is sick and working this weekend.) Since I love to read but often don't because of the "To do's" on my list, I can listen to my story while I do my to do's. Voila! Genius! Thanks to my friend Jen (www.jennybjones.com) who is also a genius, I now know that the Bentonville Public Library has not only snazzy chairs, but free membership. So... when I finish Prince Caspian I will go and check out another audio book to load onto the 'ole iPod. Wow. I think I can rest now. My day is complete. Goodnight and pleasant dreams. By the way, I'm considering starting a blog for my dreams. Thoughts?

The equipment (and a lady doing some sweet jazz hands):

The Bald Spot



Interesting phenomenon, isn't it? It's a place on one's head devoid of hair. I happen to love them for good reason- two of my favorite ones live in my house. All the time I catch myself kissing Amillia on her bald spot and thinking that one day she'll have hair there and that will mean she's bigger and older than she is right now. It's kind of a sad little kiss that I give her. I'm not very good at her getting bigger. Time travels much too fast these days, and I don't particularly like it. I didn't expect this. I didn't expect to have this feeling that I can't catch up with the days that are going by much too quickly. I look back at pictures of her when she was newly born and she looks so different, but the same. My mom and I watched the video of her birth last week and her first cry sounds just the same as the cry she does when I lay her down for a nap. She's just getting so big. Yesterday at her 4 month well baby check up with Dr. Harmon she weighed 15 lbs and 1 oz. (in the 79 percentile) and was 24 3/4" long (in the 67%). She's grown exactly 7 lbs since the day she was born and exactly 5 inches. Big girl! And for the record... now that her she sits up in her Bumbo seat (see picture further down of baby in purple foam chair), she is growing some hair back there.

How dare you, Mother Nature?! You tease!

Or Amillia's 4 month birthday...

So if you refer to my last post you'll see that I was enjoying 72 degree weather outside with my daughter just 4 days ago. Yesterday it started snowing. And it snowed and snowed and snowed. All day long it snowed. Today (Sunday) we are snowed in. Can you believe this Arkansas weather? Craziness! Yesterday was Amilla's 4 month birthday. We celebrated by eating a terribly-made chocolate cake (Bryan's g-ma's recipe which I have yet to get right...) and relaxing all day. It was great. We just spent the day enjoying her. I'll attach some pictures. She's such a big girl these days. We caught her rolling over for her first time on video which is super cool. I was reminded of how her cousin Charis walked for the first time in front of our whole family on her 1st birthday. Amillia continues to smile all the time. She loves to talk and is beginning to laugh. So far, she just laughs at the dogs and when we tickle her belly and "get her." She does a little nervous laugh that's really low sometimes which is so funny. She brings us so much joy. Last night when I was making the infamous goo cake, I had the radio on and that Beyonce song about the single ladies throwing their hands up (or something like that) was on and I was dancing and moving my arms in circles above my head (yes, I'm sore today) and Millie starts moving her arms around like crazy and kicking her legs. It was laugh-out-loud funny. I just love that she likes to be entertained by us. The best part was when Bryan came in and started dancing too. She just smiled a mile wide and kept on kicking.

Look at those baby blues!

Funny girl!

Look at the snow! It was a blizzard!