Ruthie on April 4th, 2010

After the Easter egg hunt yesterday, I was trying to help my poor toothless-but-teething girl by letting her chew on my finger, and I found she wasn’t toothless anymore. Tiny teeth had come through! Corinne has teeth.

Ruthie on March 21st, 2010

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Mama’s goal was to get Corinne to the 6 month mark without a drop of formula or other supplementation, and this goal has been reached. Woo Hoo. We have been playing in the evening with some solid foods and cereal to just see how she would do and get her used to spoons and booster seats and such. Towards the end of this month, Corinne has been more and more excited about solid foods and almost attacks it.

One night, Corinne tore through almost an entire banana. I ate half of one and mashed up the other half for her, and she was clearly not finished. So I ate a half of another banana and mashed up another half. She just about polished it off before our walk to Chipotle for dinner. She loved the walk and then got a kick out of looking out of the Chipotle windows at the cars driving by. Her head went back and forth like she was watching a tennis match. (Back to the banana thing…watch out if you are ever holding her and peeling a banana. She will sneeky lean forward, mouth open wide, and all of the sudden become suctioned to the banana sucking and “gumming” it like you wouldn’t believe. It’s hilarious.)

At school, Corinne moved up to the next baby classroom at “school” for the in between sitting and crawling stage babies. She spent time in both classrooms for a week or so to help her transition. She is not quite sitting completely on her own yet like the other babies, but the new room is quieter and a little more calm than the previous one. Four new six week olds arrived to her first classroom making it a little chaotic. Those babies need a lot more attention than Corinne at this point. Miss Erin is her new teacher; she is a really sweet young lady. The babies that are in the new room are the ones Corinne started out with a few months ago. Also, it has windows! She can see outside to the playground where the big kids play. The old classroom has no windows which is great when you’re trying to keep the lights dim for babies to sleep, but not for little girls who are fascinated by everything going on around them like Corinne.

Corinne has been very healthy this month compared to the last. She did have one little bout of fever and cough, but mommy and daddy could handle it this time (although this time daddy was the one who wanted the baby monitor on and the door to Corinne’s room open at night this time around).

After all of that, we decided to work on helping our girl get to sleeping through the night again. Ever since RSV, colds, daycare and growth spurts, Corinne has had trouble sleeping through the night. She is almost there. When she does wake up, she cries for a bit but is starting to go to sleep on her own. And we’ve gone from 3-4 times a night to 2-3 times a night. We feel we are almost there.

She continues to try to roll over and new this month, she can sit for a few seconds at a time without any help. We put pillows or boppy’s all around her so she has a soft landing. But she looks so grown up when she gets it. According to her pediatrician’s office, she is officially 19 pounds and 10 ounces (95th percentile) and 29 inches long (off the charts above 100th percentile). In the words of our pediatrician, she is as big as an 11th month old and a “giant.” We add that she is amazing!

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Her new toy this month was an exersaucer. She is hilarious in it talking with her toys and grabbing anything she can get to her mouth.

Corinne got some time with her Uncle David…

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We went to San Antonio this month to catch up with friends and family. Gigi got Corinne a much needed chew toy named Sophie.

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Cici liked to feed Corinne bananas for a snack. She loved them!

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Corinne got some time with Uncle Jeremiah while DD barbequed…

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Daddy also got some great pics with his girl…

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Corinne and Uncle Stephen hung out and smiled together and showed off their eyebrows and Corinne slobbered all over Uncle Stephen….

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No really….look closer.

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Cici got some great 6 month pictures of Corinne (the one posted at the top of this post is hers of course). Here are some more.

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The winner….

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Ruthie on March 14th, 2010

Last July, my friend Stephanie and her 6 month old (at the time) Isaac came to visit when I was about 7 months pregnant with Corinne. At the time, I think Isaac was none too happy about meeting us, and I was beginning to feel like a giant boat/barge with legs. We ate at two of Fort Worth’s finest: La Playa Maya and Curly’s Frozen Custard. It’s crazy to think that this was just 8 short months ago….

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This week Stephanie and Isaac came back to see family and made some time to hang out with us again. This time we went to Tom’s Burgers since our Lebanese selection of restaurants was closed. We enjoyed some greasy fries, onion rings and burgers. It was wild to see how much Isaac has grown and see him together with Corinne.

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As you can see, we may need to teach Corinne not to be so forward with the boys (pulling their hair and drooling all over them is usually not well received in my limited experience). But, we so enjoyed getting to see these guys for a bit today!

Stephanie’s hubbie, Keith, is in PA school up in Connecticut. We have missed them tremendously, but they are almost finished and planning on moving back to DFW this summer. I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since they moved. Looking at these pictures, Stephanie is right; the time seems to have flown by and it also seems like forever ago when you think about the fact that we are now parents and talking about things like having more kids and price per square foot of houses. Hmmm.

Well, we look forward to hanging out some more and being colleagues very very soon! Can’t wait.

Ruthie on February 22nd, 2010

Josh asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told him. I wanted to be with him and our girl, and I wanted to go to the roof at the Reata for their famous appetizers, some drinks, and of course some pictures. Daddy came through as always.

We went a little early, so we went to Barnes and Noble to get Corinne take a look as some new books. What’s funny is Corinne seems mesmerized by Big Bird. She stares and stares at the Big Bird dolls they have. She also loves books. She is getting to where she loves to either look at or eat the pages.

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We had our favorite appetizers: the tenderloin tamales, the smoked quail with jalapeno cheddar grits, and the wild boar ribs. So Good!

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And we got some great pictures with our girl. Happy birthday to me…with my sweet little family!

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The winner…happy birthday, mama!

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Ruthie on February 21st, 2010

On Corinne’s 4 month birthday, we woke up to a sickie. She threw up and had a fever that just went up and up all day. We took her in for her 4 month doctor visit which turned into a sick visit. We followed up two days later (on a Saturday) with a fever and a cough that was quickly turning cruddy. Later that day we decided to head to the Children’s hospital to have her tested for RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). We didn’t get the results until Monday and in the meantime, she seemed to be doing better. However, we found out that she was RSV positive and needed to keep her out of daycare for a few more days since that virus is so contagious.

Corinne faired pretty well through it all. A coworker of mine has a daughter a month older than Corinne. She ended up admitted to the hospital for three days to get oxygen and respiratory treatments. I never want to see Corinne as sick as she was again, but I know that our experience was much less traumatic than other families dealing with RSV.

We got through that week and started a new week only to have Corinne wake up one morning covered in puke…seriously covered! We fed her and minutes later she threw up down my back and all over the floor. She just smiled at us. And then she did it again and just kept smiling. I started to take her to school. Since she really didn’t seem bothered by it, I assumed it was just a bad air bubble. Then she did it two more times. Corinne ended up having a terrible stomach bug for the next two days.

So, Josh and I have been inducted into the both-parents-working-while-only-one-has-sick-days-and-the-daycare-keeps-getting-our-baby-sick never ending cycle of craziness. We spent a lot of time preparing for a lot of things, but we weren’t prepared for the stress that working and taking care of a sickie at the same time would cause.

Nevertheless, Corinne has bounced back. After spending most of the first two weeks of her fifth month sick, she went through a major growth spurt last weekend eating every 2-3 hours (all day and all night) for a few days. She seems to have put back on the pound or two that she lost while being sick. She is now about 19 pounds and about 25 inches long. Needless to say, yesterday, we ordered a new carseat since she’ll probably grow out of the one we have in the next month.

And this girl has learned some new tricks. This last week she just started grabbing and trying to eat her toes.

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She started, got sick, and has now restarted some solid foods.

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Here is the most recent video of her eating peas. I like to title it “Corinne heart peas.”

She has also started making more noises and sounds. This past week in particular she has passed blowing bubbles and gone to “aaaaahhhhhh.” (She usually sleeps on the way to Fort Worth in the mornings, but the other day she went “aaaaahhhhh” the whole 20 minutes.) So, here is a video of more peas and Corinne’s new voice.

In addition to her new found voice, Corinne is getting very good at tummy time.

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She is trying to roll over. She actually has done it one time, but she hasn’t repeated this feat just yet.

We had a fun surprise of 13 inches of snow in DFW. Amazingly, Corinne’s first snow wasn’t in Colorado but in Texas breaking 110 year old records.

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Well, that’s all we have for this month. This past month has been one of the hardest but also the most fun. Corinne being sick was rough to deal with as a parent and as a working mom and working dad. But Corinnne has become so interactive and active…and so vocal. Every day she does something new and different. We are looking forward to the next month to see what she’ll do next!

Ruthie on February 7th, 2010

My mom bought Corinne a beautiful dress which she proudly dressed Corinne in on her special day. My friend Bethany almost brought me to tears when she reminded me there would only be one other day when she would get all dressed up in white like this. It was such a special day.

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Cute Cousin Benjamin was very dapper in his tuxedo.

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Pastor Rossow baptized Corinne and the ceremony was beautiful.

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The sponsors (also known as godmother and godfather) were/are one of my best friends Bethany and Uncle Jeremiah.

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Pastor Rossow and his family and Pastor Weichman and his family came along with Bethany, Wyatt, Darin, Jeremiah, John, Amber, Benjamin, David, Tiffany, and Cici. We had quite the showing.

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Afterward we celebrated with cupcakes…devil’s food covered in pure white icing and topped with red sprinkles. Pastor Rossow said it was Betty Crocker meets Martin Luther and Josh said I was a food theologian. Either way, I think Corinne really wanted some.

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Having our family there was priceless.

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Amber put together an amazing book of pictures and prayers for Corinne (and us). We were speechless at all of the love from all of our family and friends whether present in person or in spirit.

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My mom took some pictures of Corinne in her christening gown that were priceless.

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The winner…

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