The Mouse Family Blog

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Just ask Lauren.

Grace is exploring new foods, including finger foods she can feed herself like Puffs and bread. She likes lots of baby foods like sweet potato, green beans and banana.

Here are Grace W. (~6 mo) and Grace M. (~7 mo) playing at moms group. Cute little darlings. Both are so quiet and sweet. We'll see if they develop similar personalities to reflect their 'gracious' namesake.

At seven months, Grace is really blossoming into her own. She has lots of personality these days. Lots of people have been telling us that she "misses nothing" or is "really alert". She seems to either be a very quiet baby, or a very loud one. When she's talking she likes to say something that sounds exactly like "hey!" She hears her mom and her sister saying that word a lot. She also loves to "razz" or blow raspberries and make lip smacking noises (Grandma Ann taught her to blow kisses - one of Lauren's favorite things to do when saying good night).

Grace is taking 3 naps and sleeping through the night almost 12 hours. She has started solid foods, but lately seems to not care much for the jar variety baby food. We're not quite sure yet what to do about it. Maybe we'll get a food mill and see if home made stuff suits her tastes. She has no teeth yet. She is wearing 12 month size clothing.

She can roll over from back to front and front to back. She sits up by herself and only topples over if she's really reaching far for a toy. She loves to play with all kinds of toys and they all make it to her mouth immediately. She's got quite a strong grasp and is also strong on her legs. She hasn't made any major advancements toward crawling yet aside from sticking her butt up in the air and pushing up on her hands.

When she smiles, she is the most beautiful baby in the world (apologies to other babies we know).

Labels: Monthly Photos

So every time we come to Florida, I (Liz) try to capture some amateur beach photos. We've seen the professional photographers down here at the beach with the whole families decked out in white shirts and khaki pants or jeans. So here's the best of Grace...


And here's the best of Lauren...
(dumping sand out of a seashell onto Grace's head, and then screaming that she is done)


But to make up for it, here is a link to Lauren in her past beach photo shoot...
click here.

Of course, it really started almost 5 years ago on Siesta key beach with Liz in a white dress and Jace in a white shirt...
click here.

Jace came down during the girls trip to Sarasota for the Valentines Day weekend. Here he is with Lauren and Grace at Siesta Key beach...

And here's a cute shot of Lauren on the playground equipment they have at the beach in a nice shady pine tree grove where we have our picnics.

You can tell from our jackets that it was a bit cold at the beach. It was REALLY windy too. Lauren was kinda freaked out by the combo of the weather and the seagulls that could ride on the breeze and just hang in the air about 8 inches above your head. She 'lost it' after a while down by the surf and was ready to "clean up and go to the playground!" Watch the video...

Labels: Video

Liz and the girls are in Florida for the annual (I've gotten sick of Chicago winter) getaway to Liz's parent's house in Sarasota. The pictures are from Siesta Key beach. As you can see it's not quite swimsuit weather here, but I'll take windy and in the 60s over what they are having in Chicago right now thank you very much. Plus having other people doing the cooking, cleaning and laundry (not to mention some child care) is what I call a vacation!

Wow - time flies by! Beautiful Grace is six months old! In the past month she has started solid food...so far, she is pretty happy with the rice and oatmeal baby cereal, but the debut of carrots got mixed reviews. You should watch the video of her first meal. She is sleeping great - three naps, 12 hours at night (7pm - 7am) with one wake up around 3 or 4 to eat.

We had an interesting visit to her pediatrician this month. Her weight gain was not what our doctor expected to see...so much less so, that the doctor took her to another room to weigh her on another scale. Turns out she only put on 6 ounces since her 4 month visit. Her current weight still puts her in the 75-90%tile so we're not very worried. She still has fat rolls on her legs that go on for days. We are assuming that the introduction of solids will give her to opportunity to eat as much food as she wants. Since she is so happy and sleeps well, we're not worried that she isn't getting enough. We have introduced some formula now and then for ease of babysitting and we give her about 4 ounces at night as a cluster feeding to help her get tanked up for a long night of sound sleeping. She does not have any teeth, but likes to chew fingers (especially moms) and anything else she can get in her mouth.

6 Month Stats:
Weight = 17.6 oz (75-90%)
Height = 27.75 in (95%)

The dress and pants in the photo are Grace's 'classy Minnie Mouse' outfit by Mommy Said Sew (aka Liz). Lauren has a coordinating outfit! Go to www.mommysaidsew.com to see more pics of the girls and their outfits.

Labels: Monthly Photos

Okay, this is pretty geeky, but worth checking out.

I'm not sure how or why this site does this, but it's neat for a look.

• Grace's comes to Dinner
• Lauren goes Sledding

My favorite is this "simple ascii" version of the video.

Labels: Geek Stuff, Movies

Here's a video of our trip to Winnemac Park, here in our neighborhood. We don't have much in the way of hills. My favorite part was (unfortunately not caught on film) when Lauren yelled "Go, go, go, look at that grown-up go!" Lauren had a pretty good time despite getting cold, and even took a couple of small wipe-outs in stride.

Labels: Movies

Congratulations, Grace! She's starting solid foods, which means she gets to hang out with the family for dinner. She ate rice cereal tonight and LOVED it. Lauren also decided to try "an old favorite," but she was n0t as impressed.

Also, note the new duds, a gift from Aunt Charolette.

Labels: Movies

Here is a slide show of pictures from our 2009 Christmas / New Years trip to Oklahoma. We stayed with Jace's parents in Elk City and then with Jace's brother Bret's family in Norman. We enjoyed seeing all the aunts, uncles and cousins and wish we lived closer!!

With names like theirs and faces like theirs, one might think they were angels!