Reminders

Take it from someone who knows: nothing will prepare you for actually being a mother. Being the oldest of eight certainly helps, but there is a world of difference between raising a little one of your own and being able to pass the kids off to Mom. And if you’re 35 when you become a mom…well, there are quite a few things you’ve forgotten about when your siblings (now all in their twenties) were tiny.

For instance: bath toys. There was a time in my life when the bathtub always had toys around it, in it or near it. I’m sure I couldn’t tell you what they were today, although Katey had one I’ll never forget. It was a huge fish with other little fishes that attached to its side. But it’s been quite a while since my bathtub had anything in it except shampoo, conditioner and various bottles from Bath & Body. Today, however, if you go into our bathroom you will find Emry’s ducks all in a row along the edge, along with her little dolphin. Bath time wouldn’t be half as much fun without them!

I have also been reminded of how much little ones drop when they eat. Thus far Emry hasn’t learned to throw her green beans, or bananas, or Cheerios. A few end up on the floor, but most of them I discover down the sides of her chair. I remember hating the duty of taking the drop cloth outside to shake it off. Tiny bits of chicken, carrots and peas were gross – even if I didn’t have to touch them. Today I pick up stray pears, animal crackers and apple pieces without much thought. Either I’ve matured or I simply don’t care anymore. Probably the latter.

No doubt many other things soon to come in our future will remind me of things I have forgotten about my siblings being babies. Some will make me smile. Others will make me laugh. But that is part of being a mother, too…and a sister!

Emry helping me fold her diapers!

Likes and Dislikes

I hate okra. But there are members of my family who eat it like popcorn. I like Oreos, not that I buy them, but if they’re around, I do enjoy them. Yet my sister Sally avoids them like a plague. Why? I’m not sure.

We all have taste buds. We can taste sweet versus salty. Spicy versus bland. Something in those taste buds on our tongue triggers something in our brain. While this is especially helpful when we put something that’s gone bad in our mouths, causing us to spit it out, it’s also a strange sense. Because why does one person like licorice and another hates it? Why does one person like sweet more than salty? Why do I like broccoli but hate lima beans?

Now some tastes are acquired over time. During my years in Texas, I found I needed my salsa spicier and spicier as I adjusted. And what we loved as kids, we may not like as adults. Meanwhile, what we like as adults we may have hated as kids. Cultures play into this, too. Mexicans love their food spicy. Scandinavians have very bland tastes. (Witnessed by me who saw the spice aisle of the grocery store shrink by more than half when I moved from Texas to Minnesota. There were moments I wondered if these Scandinavian descendants even knew what spices were.) Who truly knows what triggers the tastes we like and don’t like. But we can be grateful that God didn’t create us like animals. We can taste. It’s part of our uniqueness.

Emry has been trying many new foods over the past month. Thus far she hasn’t seemed to dislike any of them – until this week. I had given her peas a couple of weeks prior, but not very many. I thought most of them ended up in her high chair because she was still learning the mechanisms of picking small things up and getting them into her mouth. This time I gave her more and then went into the kitchen to get some things prepared for dinner. When I returned, I thought she had eaten a few. But when I picked one up and put it in her mouth for her, she immediately spit it right back out. I tried again. Same result. And then I noticed she was carefully picking up the Cheerios on her tray, avoiding the peas mixed up in them. We had met our first distaste: peas. In fact, I found the ones I thought she had eaten in her highchair.

I am sure we will meet many things over the next many years that Emry does not like. In the meantime, it was rather amusing watching her spit out the peas, pushing them out of the way so she could get to her Cheerios. And at least we haven’t started throwing things we don’t like on the floor. Meanwhile, we’ll stick the sweet potatoes, yogurt and peaches. And maybe over the next few days we’ll try green beans. Yea!

7 Months Old!

Today our Emry is seven months old! She is sitting up by herself, wiggling and squirming to get to where she wants, and eating bananas and carrots and squash and just about anything else we think she can gum. Her hair is growing as ever. Soon we will have to purchase barrettes to keep it from her eyes. She is growing. I have packed up almost all of her newborn clothes! Three month clothes fit perfectly…three to six month clothes are a little big…and six month clothes- well, it’s a good thing baggy is back in style! (Still not sure where the little petite-ness is coming from!) And while we have fussy moments as our body adjusts to all the changes of growing, new food and teeth we hope are coming soon; we truly remain a happy baby with lots of laughs and smiles.

So happy to be seven months!

Making faces with our Sock Monkey.

Getting bigger!

Just Because

It’s been a little while since I posted pictures of Emry. I guess we haven’t been taking quite as many since we haven’t done anything real exciting lately, but we do have some cute ones I’ll share…

Playing with the hippo and duck Grandma Sturm sent us.

Reading our “Pat the Bunny” book by ourselves!

Modeling the dress Aunt Jenny made for us.

Our first Dunkin’ Donuts coffee – we liked it! (Just kidding…but we did like Papa’s hashbrowns.)

Off the Charts

Yet another colloquialism in our English language: off the charts. We all know what it means. And, we all want to be there. It’s our human pride that tells us we don’t need to be where everyone else is. We need to be “off the charts”, somewhere in a grand place that makes us different and better. Of course, there are a couple of things wrong with that idea that immediately come to mind. One, if everyone is “off the charts” then aren’t we all on the same chart? And two, what chart are we measuring on anyhow?

In my life, I will probably never be off any chart. I’m pretty average in just about everyway. Average clothes size, average shoe size, average income, average height and weight, average skill set. And most days, that’s perfectly okay. I’m quite happy 99% of the time to fly under the radar. But I now have one thing to claim: I have a daughter who is off the charts.

I’m talking about those charts health professionals use to tell you what “percentile” your baby is in. This is a very wide chart of averages based upon a baby’s height, weight and month of life compared to all the other babies in the world of their same month of life. And considering there is a 100% bracket your baby can fall into every month, it doesn’t seem like a wonderfully accurate way of averaging your baby. (And who wants their baby averaged anyway? Don’t we all think each of our babies as being uniquely special and they are?) But doctors use them every time you step into the office.

At her fourth month appointment, Emry was way off the charts. At a mere nine pounds, fourteen ounces I could see the doctor’s concern. And yet she was happy, healthy and her low weight matched her tiny, petite features. I just needed to make sure she truly was eating enough.

Fast forward two months to her six month appointment this week. Emry has been eating solids for just over a month – bananas, peaches, carrots, yogurt, apples and (her favorite) butternut squash. Plus she does pretty well with chasing Cheerios around and shoving them into her mouth. To me, this little girl has grown like a weed. She’s heavier to carry around, she has nearly outgrown all her 0-3 month clothes and she just looks bigger. I’m almost worried she eats too much. I put her down on the scale at the doctor’s office and she weighs in at a whopping 12 pounds, 1 ounce – finally outdistancing her Uncle Caleb’s birth weight by an ounce. She has put on just over two pounds of weight. No wonder she feels heavy!

Then the doctor pulls up her chart on her computer and says, “She is still off the charts – well below the average.” And she is. You can see her little dot on the chart off in a white section all by itself. “But,” the petite little doctor continues, “she has grown well at her own average and seems to be quite healthy.”

And she is. She eats well. Her teeth are no longer bugging her. She got over her little illness. So, she’s back to being her happy, smiling, talkative self. She pushes herself around on her belly to get to the things she wants, she is now quite ticklish on her belly and she sleeps and naps well. And by the time she reaches 7 months next week, I think I will have packed away all her newborn clothes, although she swims in her 6-month outfits. Oh, well.  She is happy and healthy….and off the charts!