miscellany

Sigh. I keep thinking of blog posts I need to write. And I keep not having time to get them actually written, or posted, or anything. :-p

I am such a slacker blogger mom.

Natalie is now 6 months (that's half a year!) old. Wow. She is eating rice cereal, applesauce, bananas, and sweet potatoes. She enjoys sitting up and playing. She smiles and laughs (especially at her big sister! She absolutely howls with laughter when Sarah starts jumping in front of her). She does this incredibly adorable thing where she grabs my face (or Nelson's) in her hands, pulls it to her, and puts my nose or cheek in her mouth. I think it's her way of trying to kiss us! :)

She has been sick this week. Saturday she started sounding congested, so I ran the humidifier that night and kept her home from church Sunday. By Sunday evening, she was starting to sound rattly and wheezing. So Monday, I took her to the doctor. She couldn't get in with our regular pediatrician, but another doctor in the practice checked her. He told me to give her regular doses of Benadryl to clear the congestion and prescribed a steroid for the wheezing, which he said was inflammation.

I was surprised; I had never heard of giving a baby a steroid. But it worked. It stopped the wheezing, rattling noise. She is now feeling much better. (A friend of mine said her daughter had gotten inflammation like this and had steroids prescribed a couple of times as well. I guess you learn something new every day.)

I need to get pictures of Natalie sitting up posted; I also have pictures of Sarah feeding Natalie. (Awww...) But the camera batteries are low, so that will have to wait for another day and another post.

Sarah loves Natalie and loves being a big sister. Still, sometimes her reactions to other people interacting with Natalie can be quite hilarious. One day when we visited my parents, Sarah walked into the living room to find my dad holding Natalie. "Why are you holding her?" Sarah demanded. "Are you bored or something?"

One day when Natalie was being particularly fussy and clingy, I jokingly told her that I was going to go crazy and that she was the reason. Sarah informed me, "She's not a reason! She's a baby!"

I also get a kick out of watching Sarah use her imagination. She decided to ride a horse one day. She brought one of her child-sized chairs into the living room. She placed the chair legs inside two pairs of shoes--those were the horseshoes!

(Caution: stop reading here if you are offended by language. It was unintentional on Sarah's part, but language was definitely involved.)

Sarah is learning to read. We have these cards that go over word families. She was reading cards that have words ending in "it." Sarah successfully read read sit, hit, bit, fit, etc. But she got to the words that have consonant blends (flit, spit, etc.) and began having a bit more trouble sounding the words out.

You know where this is going don't you? Yep, you guessed it. In trying to read one of the words (I don't even remember which one), Sarah read, "Sh*t." I didn't tell her it was a "bad" word, of course, but I couldn't help laughing as I said, "No, look again, that's not what it says." (I laughed pretty hard though.)

In the same session, Sarah got confused trying to read "spit." And she said "p*ss." We had quite the salty reading session that night! Ah, the adventures of homeschooling....

Okay, that's all for now (how could I possibly top that, anyway?). ;)