Instilling a Strong Work Ethic in Our Children. . . .

Last weekend I had to do some work from home, 4th of July weekend or not. Luckily, Rosemary was around to help me with a lot of the research and writing portion of my project. . . .







Like me, she seems to have a habit of chewing on her pen/highlighter while she's working.

Going for a Walk with Mommy over the Long Weekend

This past week I was off work on Friday for the 4th of July holidays, so I took the babies for a nice, long walk, and we took a picture before we left:



I think the babies look particularly cute in their Thing 1, Thing 2, and Thing 3 t-shirts that Aunt Cindy, Uncle Doug, and cousins Andrew and Tyler gave the babies for their birthday!

Rosemary STILL Sure Does Like Her Sweet Potatoes

About six months ago, I made a blog post about how much Rosemary likes her sweet potatoes. Well, Rosemary still likes her sweet potatoes -- especially when they're in the form of french fries!!

Buh-Bye Bottles

We are about to have a lot of extra room in our kitchen cabinets. . . .





The babies had their one-year well baby check-up yesterday morning, and the pediatrician gave us the go ahead to drop bottles and formula!! We are really excited, especially considering that it's going to be saving us about $23/day! So far the babies absolutely love their whole milk and sippy cups, and we just hope that continues.

Here are the babies' stats from their check-up (based on actual, not corrected, age):

Piper: 18 lbs. 8 oz. (10th percentile), 28 inches long (10th - 25th percentile), 17.25" head circumference (10th - 25th percentile)

Henry: 19 lbs. 11 oz. (5th - 10th percentile), 29.5 inches long (25th - 50th percentile), 18.75" head circumference (75th - 90th percentile)

Rosemary: 16 lbs. 3.5 oz. (<5th percentile), 25.5 inches long (<5th percentile), 17" head circumference (5th - 10th percentile)

The pediatrician is very happy with the babies' growth so far, and is glad that the babies have been moving up the growth chart and increasing their percentiles at each visit. The main goal is that the babies not fall off their own growth curve (i.e., not go from the 10th percentile to the 5th percentile), and we have not come close to that happening! Considering the way they've been eating lately, I think we're doing pretty well in the growing department. . . . Usually premature babies will eventually "grow into" their heads. So, we've been told that we can expect the babies to be about as big as their head percentiles. Based on that, the babies still have some growing and catching up to do -- especially Henry!

A Step in the Right Direction. . . .

Tonight Piper took a step. Only one, but it was her first step. We had one-year check-ups this morning, complete with a few shots, so Gary had pulled out the Tylenol for the babies' last dose before bedtime. Piper L-O-V-E-S her some Tylenol, so she turned around, stepped toward Gary, and reached for the Tylenol! Not much longer and we won't be able to get her to stop running. . . .

We're All Okay. . . .

So far I've had 3 people ask today if all is okay because I haven't updated the blog in almost a week, so I'm making a picture-less post from work (shhh! -- don't tell anyone). We're all fine -- I just have computer issues at home. Gary and I each have our own laptop. The pocket camera and video camera upload to Gary's laptop, my camera uploads to my laptop. It's a pain to switch things around, and if I need pictures from Gary's computer, I have to get on his computer, e-mail the pictures to myself, save them on whatever computer I'm using, then upload them to the blog -- which all takes forever (yes, I know that I could upload everything directly from Gary's computer to the blog, but he gets all grumpy if I'm on his computer too long or if I log him off blogger or whatnot).

Anyway, my computer very unexpectedly died. I finally had time to call Dell yesterday and learned that the hard drive "went bad" and I need a new one. The good news is that I will lose no pictures at all because I never delete pictures and that, since I just recently got around to transferring it, my iTunes is on a flashdrive and I think I'll only lose about 3 songs (I just hope I can de-authorize iTunes on that hard drive without much trouble, if that's even necessary). The week before my brand new blackberry Storm died and has yet to be resurrected, so I'm using a dinosaur of a blackberry. A few days after my computer at home died, my computer at work showed signs of dying as well (though it has now had a miraculous recovery). After all that, Gary banned me from touching his computer because I may give whatever "virus" I may have to his computer, so I didn't have access to any pictures or a personal computer even if I had time to blog considering last week's particularly hectic week at work.

Sadly enough, we didn't really take any 4th of July pictures, even though the babies were wearing really cute outfits. We may have to get them dressed up again to take retroactive 4th of July pictures. On Saturday, we headed up to my mom and dad's house, where we ate a huge lunch and went swimming with the babies. We were so busy that I barely pulled my camera out. Everyone found some new food that they like, Piper loves Nilla wafers, Henry loves potato salad, and Rosemary loves . . . deviled eggs. She ate about 6 of them. Demolished them. A little bizarre, but not too bad on the nutrition scale. The babies also ate a lot of banana pudding, too.

Rest assured, I am still taking pictures of everyday life and will have lots of updates as soon as Dell sends me my new hard drive (ETA Wednesday). Blog updates just aren't very fun without pictures!

I hope you all had a great 4th of July!