INSERT DISK HERE:

My son Christopher passed his 6 month baby checkup at the pediatrician with flying colors.  If only adult physical tests were this easy – pass a block from hand to hand, pick up a raisin (which was promptly taken away because he’s too little – where’s the reward in that?), a turn of the head when your name is called…  He has mastered all of it and is right where he should be developmentally.  Except for one thing – sitting up.  No I didn’t forget the ‘p’ – he has mastered spitting up…  haha.  But he can’t sit up unassisted yet, and he doesn’t even seem to be close to doing so.  The problem is that he refuses to bend at the waist.  If I can get him into a sitting position, (and that’s a big IF!) he arches his back immediately and tries to stand.  I tried to explain this to the nurse so she wouldn’t think he is physically slow, but he lost points anyway.  Never mind that he can use his legs to jump vigorously in his bouncer that hangs from the doorway, or that he can single-handedly pull and move a heavy dining room chair with his iron grip – he still loses points for not being able to sit unassisted.  Oh well, if that’s how they score it, that’s how they score it.  It’s not like it bothers me at all; I actually find it amusing.  I think he might be crawling and walking before he sits…

Other news from the doctor appointment is that he weighs 16 lbs. 13oz. which is in the 30 percentile for weight.  An easy explanation of the percentile comparison is this:  If you take 100 babies my son’s age, 30 of them would be at his weight or lower and 70 of them would weigh more than he does.  He is 27¼ inches long, which puts him in the 75th percentile for height.  His head circumference is 45.2 cm which is exactly average.  I think he is probably our most average-sized baby; our oldest was always small for her age and the two in the middle were huge – Disney was once in the 100th percentile for height!  Just another example of how different kids are, even ones in the same family.  My 4 children physically remind me of each other, yet it’s so fun to watch their differences emerge as they learn and grow!  Here are Disney and Christopher, my two youngest:

This is probably one of the last posts I’m going to write about pregnancy.  As we get down to the end, there’s not much to report (I cannot physically do much TO report!), and I will definitely post pictures of the baby.  I started my weekly Dr. visits a few weeks ago, and today, finally we are starting to see some action.  The Dr. says my pregnancy is now officially full-term, and my body is preparing for birth.  At today’s Dr. visit, the baby was moving around lots while she was listening to his heartbeat, and it accelerated nicely while he moved.  The Dr. wants me to get induced the week before my due date because I have big babies (Taylor was only 7 lbs 2 oz, but the last 2 were 8 lbs 12 oz), but Dr. is off on Monday, so right now we’re looking at July 8 or 9.  I don’t have to decide until next Monday, but I think I’m going to go with the 8th since I’m so anxious – why wait if I don’t have to?  I have a few meetings scheduled that week, but I will have to miss them.  Besides, that’s a nice date for a birthday – 7/08/08 – since we have no hope of holding out til the 21st.  Our first 2 daughters were born on the 21st of their months, December and May, and then our third daughter was born a day early, on October 20…  sometimes I forget and celebrate her “month” birthdays on the 21st out of habit…  But baby Christopher will be no where near the 21st…  July 8th – that’s only 5 days after my birthday!  But I like the sound of it and can’t believe that it’s only 2 weeks away!  Time flies so fast, 2 weeks will pass in no time!  Good thing too because I get less sleep by the night.  I’m up going to the bathroom at least 3-4 times, and then I’ve been having trouble sleeping when I lay down again.  But since I don’t plan much during the day and my oldest daughter is out of school for the summer – she is a great big help with our youngest-for-now, I have been getting good naps for the most part.

Please send thoughts and prayers for our friend Cathy who is in the hospital after having a heart attack on Sunday.  We’re going to visit her tonight and hopefully she’ll be feeling well soon!

We stayed up late watching the Oscar winning movie, “No Country for Old Men” last night, so when the phone rang at 6 am this morning, my husband was overjoyed about the fog delay.  I did not hear the phone at 6, nor did I hear the follow-up call at 8 saying school was cancelled for the day.  I was up by 8:30, since that is the time we have our alarm set and my biological clock won’t let me sleep past then for fear the alarm won’t work and we’ll be late for school.  My husband was shutting off the alarm when I said, “We can’t sleep too long cuz Disney has a doctor appointment at 9:30.  Look at all those delays on the tv for Toledo.  Wonder how we got spared?”  Turns out, we did not, I just didn’t hear the phone ringing and Hubby was wondering why I was taking it so well that we couldn’t sleep in after all.  I don’t understand why it is that every time we have a doctor appointment scheduled for the morning, we have either a school delay or cancellation, meaning we can’t sleep in even if we wanted to.  And of course on these days, the kids always sleep in, whereas on the weekends, they’re up at their usual 7am wake-up-for-school time.  So now, they have yet ANOTHER day they have to make up in the summer, which brings them to July by now?  Dunno, I’ve lost track.

And today’s fog cancellation means we had to drag the entire family into the doctor’s office for our 18 month-old’s checkup – which did not go well.  Remember how I said the kids were going to sleep in today?  That means our 3-year-old, who is a stinker anyway, was not ready to get up, so she screamed from the time she was dragged out of bed until we got called into the doctor’s office.  So of course, the chain reaction was set into motion.  Seeing big sis so upset made Disney upset, and now she was screaming about everything the poor nurse and doctor were doing to her.  All painless stuff too that normally would not have been a problem – SCREAM, measure her head (46.7 cm), SCREAM, measure her length (32.5 in. – tall for her age), SCREAM, weigh her (22 lbs. 14 oz. – normal for her age, but a little on the skinny side because she is long), SCREAM, look into her ears, SCREAM, have her walk across the room to Mom and Dad…  well, actually, walk to big sis Taylor since she was upset with Mom and Dad for being accomplices to all the other horrors in the doctor’s office.  When it was finally over, she was better, and in the end, she didn’t want to leave because she was really happy with a toy they had in the waiting room she was playing with while I was making her next torture date, err appointment.  The good news is that Disney is exhaused from being so upset all morning, so I should get my nap today while she takes one…  hopefully.

Also, staying up late last night to watch the Oscar winning movie was regrettable.  I just didn’t get it.  I think I understood the movie, but not why it won 4 academy awards and got nominated for a bunch more.  I liked other Coen Brothers movies too – Fargo is really good, but this one was not very good in my opinion, and my husband agreed.  Just a story about a man who stumbles upon a crime scene and finds a ton of money, then he spends the rest of the movie trying to outrun the psychopath who is chasing him down for the money.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Tommy Lee Jones in this movie, because I didn’t know he was going to  be in it and I always enjoy his work – from Two-Face in the 3rd Batman movie, Batman Forever to Men in Black, to Volcano and The Fugitive, he’s a pretty good actor and always fun to watch – even in this movie, which I would officially classify as a waste of time.  Sure, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the other stinkers I’ve seen lately, like the Night Listener or Doomsday, the standard bad movies that I judge all bad movies by, but that’s only because it wasn’t as boring as the former and not as gory as the latter.  Academy award winning movies are always a hit-or-miss as far as I’m concerned.  I used to write them off, but when I started giving them a chance, I’ve actually enjoyed some, such as the aforementioned Fargo and As Good as it Gets, to name a few.  Now that I think of it, Coen brothers’ movies are kind of hit and miss also.  Ladykillers was just ok, Fargo was very good, Big Lebowski was average, I didn’t care much for O Brother Where Art Thou, and I’ll have to see Raising Arizona again since it’s been awhile, and I didn’t realize it was a Coen brothers movie.

I think I will skip the other Oscar winners from 2007 – seemed like a slow year.  I might be more open to nominees from other years past though…  a friend borrowed us Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic.  I’m not a huge Reese Witherspoon fan, but I do like Johnny Cash.  Been trying to get Hubby to watch it with me, though I’m as yet unsuccessful even though he admitted we should have watched it last night instead of No Country for Old Men.  Oh, well, now we have some Oscar-winning-film watching experience under our belt for future reference.  YES – the baby is down for a nap, think I’ll join her…  and a side effect of the fog day, actually a GOOD one – no need to wake from my nap by 3:30 to pick up kids!  Now if only the older 2 can settle down for an hour or more to give me peace and quiet…