Thanksgiving

We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving. Dave enjoyed his 4-day weekend, and I got 4 days off working on the Nativity. The day started with Dave running 4 miles in the local "Run for the Pies" in which the first couple hundred people across the finish line won a pie.

Two years ago he ran this race with my sister and her husband, and we thought it was a 5k (3.1 miles). This year he trained for 4 miles and was pleased he improved his time by a whole minute, and got a Publix apple pie.

Jessica and I waited at the playground during the race. She had no fear; she climbed all over and was happy to have kids running all around her.

Dave cooked ALL of Thanksgiving dinner. I had been only buying instant & frozen food, and hadn't made any plans by the Saturday before Thanksgiving.  Dave took the initiative: "I'm making a list and going shopping, Liz. What do we need?"

Dave and I love watching Alton Brown's Good Eats. Dave used Brown's recipe to brine our turkey for the second year. 

All I did to help was set the table, take pictures, and beg for vegetables besides everyday broccoli and carrots. Dave got me spagetti squash and artichoke--yum. Besides some extra salty potatoes, everything was perfect. He even did all the dishes. Thanks, hon.

We failed to get a good picture of all of us.

Jessica chowed down and used our tablecloth as a napkin for her hands. Here she bites a stuffing popsicle.

Here's Jessica's opinion of the meal:

After Jessica's morning nap on Black Friday, we went shopping. Jessica lasted about 4 hours--the last hour we had to switch toys, snacks, or distracting games every 5 minutes. But we made it to 4 stores and picked up some deals.

We wanted to buy ALL of the toys from our childhood for her THAT DAY. We had to keep telling ourselves "She's too young for a:
dial-up phone
lite-brite
legos or duplos
tricycles
toy food and kitchens
science kits, especially involving rockets
Playdough
bristle bricks
anything Crayola
giant puzzles
popcorn pusher
toy register with plastic coins
Lincoln logs or tinker toys
etc.etc.etc."

She can't stand, and she doesn't really know how to use her shapes bucket or the wood puzzles she has now. Her first birthday is in 2 months anyhow, so we can get other toys then. We opted for a giant plush lion, balls, a 3-D bookmark, a baby laptop with buttons and lights and music, foam bath letters and a doggie washcloth mitten, and a short push toy with music & buttons.

I also bought her a cute stripey outfit (which says size 24 months but will probably fit her this summer.)  Our little baby is growing like a weed: she turned 9 months this weekend, but is wearing 9 & 12 month clothes already. She has long outgrown her little baby bjorns/slings, so we also got a frame baby backpack off Craigslist. We already tested it and it works great. We also Amazoned a plastic, indestructible Nativity.

Saturday we pulled out the decorations, and Jessica loved the loud plastic sparkly tree beads.

Dave persuaded me we needed a real tree. It's been 5 years with only the fake 3-footer. So Jessica went with us to get the skinniest tree in the lot. (I thought that was a funner milestone than seeing Santa.) She just thought it interesting, but spikey. I've been letting her play with the little tree (shown below), and our Christmas bells. So far she's pretty obedient about not pulling ornaments off, and Smokey has no interest in the trees either...but we'll see.

I also found the cutest Christmas PJs for her with "I've been good" and reindeer all over. But she kept pulling at the forearm sleeves, which were too tight, so we cut them off.

We're terribly excited for Christmas this year (we're staying in Florida), and very grateful for our little Jessica.

A Whole Month's Worth of Posts

I've been busy working with my congregation for our 3rd annual Nativity Experience for the community (nativityexperience.blogspot.com). I work on it every day, so I'm behind on Jessica's blog. So I'm warning you: this is a long entry.

This October, with high temperatures still in the 80's, we got a visit from Dave's old lab buddy from University of Texas and his new wife. They had just finished a cruise, and since one of their adventures got rained out, we went snorkeling here in Jupiter. 

I drug Ruth along for some letterboxing, since there are 2 hidden near the inlet. (One I still can't find.) Jessica played and napped, and Dave kept his cell phone out of the water.

Apparently it was jellyfish day at DuBois Park. About 7 people were stung by some bad, unseen jellyfish, including a little kid all over his body (he was OK after a vinegar spray), and Dave and Jay got a little zapped when they were snorkeling in the inlet.

There were also some harmless comb jellies, less than 4 inches long. They have rainbow lights along the edges and we picked some up in our hands. If you look close you can see tiny orange, green, and purple lights.

On Conference weekend, Jessica went to the hospital. She had had a 102 fever for a week, and the doctors decided it wasn't teething, ear infections, or viral, so they took some blood and urine tests and gave her antibiotics. The next day her white blood cell count was HIGHER, not lower, so they sent her to the hospital as a precaution and for more tests. Her only other symptom was sleeping more, and probably peeing less, although we didn't notice it.

It turned out all she had was a urinary tract infection, but those results didn't come for days. In the mean time, the hospital came up with all sorts of creative tests to figure out why her white blood cell count was higher than a UTI would indicate.

We were just along for the ride the first few days. We found out Jessica's veins are hard to tap, and I couldn't stand to see her hurt, so Dave held her. She didn't like her left arm tied up to an IV, but she figured out how to wriggle some fingers out of the tape and use just her right hand. She perked back up with fluids and antibiotics, and soon acted like she was just there for fun. She had a hightech crib and a gold star helium balloon and lots of attention. Dave and I stayed with her 24 hrs for 4 days, until the last night, when she was back to her 12-hr sleep schedule: we broke down, went out to eat, then slept at home.
  

By this time, to make a long story short, we were getting tired of waiting, testing, and the parade of doctors. A misdiagnosis of pneumonia didn't help. They wanted one more test, but I wasn't buying it. I stayed up two nights for hours reading medical information online, and we discussed it. We decided to check her out. And she is just fine so far--happy and healthy. We learned a LOT about when to trust the doctor and when to trust our instincts. We appreciated the attentive care she did get and the blessings of technology.

OK, back to the fun stuff! Jessica, in the last month, has learned a lot. After self-feeding only crackers for 2 months, she finally figured out pincher grasp and started getting Cheerios in her mouth. Hooray for self-feeding babies!

She can't pick up those slippery fruits, so we tried this game one day:

She also likes to try drinking from a cup (no love for the sippie, yet)  . . . 

. . . and last week I came in after her nap to see had she sat up on her own. 

She gets on her knees sporadically, so this is my best picture. We cheer every time she does, so she knows she's doing something good. Now if she's on carpet, she can move forward to get toys. It's more of a kneel-flop forward-kneel-flop forward procedure so far. She can sit up and lay down at will now, and we are so proud. 

She is wandering farther from where we put her down, and so pleased with herself!

She's learned to drum, and babbles all the time. She says "dadadadada" all the time, occasionally says something with "k" when she sees Smokey, and knows how to say "MA!" randomly, but we're not counting anything as words yet. She knows when we ask her a questions she's supposed to say something back, and when we are telling her the name of what she has in her hand.

A friend of mine watched Jessica while I did the sound checks for Nativity. Jessica  babbled "dadada", and their family dog ran to the door thinking that their "dad" was home from work!

But she has her bad moments. She's learned to pitch fits: throwing her head back, leaning to the right, grabbing her right ear, and wailing like she's dying. But you put Cheerios on her tray and the tears suddenly evaporate. She poops in her bath, pinches us, and tries her best to jump from high places. But not too often. It all melts away when she leans forward to kiss us without being asked.

Here's a clip of me trying to secretly film her doing her new "evil laugh". I was trying to only video her from the waist up since she was taking her bath. (Now we know why she does that evil laugh in the tub!) The bathtub surprise we caught on tape made me laugh too, but disgusts Dave. We've talked seriously about early potting-training techniques . . . 

Dave is training Jessica young to root for the family alumni college football teams . . .

and Mommy spent several hours sewing a biblical costume for Jessica's first Christmas.

And there's lots of time for laughing; at anything that comes near her chin:

And the cat, of course:

Jessica's First Halloween

Well, every year I run my Halloween costume ideas by Dave, and we liked this one that takes advantage of Jessica's bald pate:

Hahahahaha! She can be the fairy princess when she's older and can pick. I'm a big Charlie Brown fan. Dave bought me the holiday DVD set (Great Pumpkin, Thanksgiving, Christmas). 

It was a fun theme. Dave's dark Snoopy ears don't show up well in these pictures. He helped me bobby pin my hair up to look like Lucy.

We kinda wanted to dress up as Peanuts characters dressed in their Halloween costumes, but it's hard to find a red hat and that green witch mask, a green WWII flying ace helmet, and Jessica doesn't know how to say "I got a rock."

We went to our church family Halloween party & Trunk-Or-Treat, and the PAL (adoption support group) kid party. Jessica liked watching the kids, and was good to stay up past her bedtime until 8:30pm, when she crashed both nights. 

Jessica, for Halloween, has been working on her new "evil laugh": a nasally, fast, sheep-baa-ing, forced low snicker. It makes everyone else laugh, and is impossible to catch on tape. You can hear a milder "mostly evil laugh" version in this clip:

My friend Meghan (left) and Halloween party chair (Padme) Josselyn. Josselyn and her crew did the most amazing Halloween decorations, complete with giant gym-sized spider web on the ceiling, tons of contests, and fake organs floating in glowing liquids. Amazing!

For trunk or treat I made the back of my PT Cruiser into a monster mouth. I used 4 black garbage bags, covered the headrests with fake eyes, and cut jaggedy teeth from poster board. And the best part: I threaded a rope through the hole of the trunk cover (top of the mouth) so you lift the jaw up and down. I played Jaws on the stereo and used a power converter to plug in lights in the candy cauldron.

While I was sweating in the Florida heat (it was Oct 29) decorating my car, Jessica had her first sucker: a strawberry Dum Dum. It only took one lick for her to figure out what a sucker is for.

The kids under age 5 had to be persuaded to put their arm in for candy. I thought I'd have to sit in the car all evening and work the mouth, but half of the kids wanted to operate it. Drew, also one of my piano students, threw out menacing monster phrases; my favorite was "You KNOW you WAHHNT some CAHHNNDY!"

Our video clips are dark and not very long, but gives you an idea.

(And Jon: We have video evidence who benefitted from your kids' trick-or-treating . . . )