Nine Months

Our little Josie turned nine months old a few weeks ago! I took her to the pediatrician for her well-baby check up, and I have some numbers to report.

Weight: 15 lb. 4 oz.

Height: 27 inches

For all of you who may not remember, she has gained a whopping 1 pound since her six month well-baby check up. She grew in length quite a bit, but really...1 pound? Not impressive. Pair that with anemia, and little Josie doesn't look so great anymore. Emphasis on the "little."

So here's our new routine with Josie: disgusting, black multivitamin drops to pump her full of iron; avocado, whole-milk yogurt, cheese, and anything else with substantial calories to plump her up; and formula-supplemented feedings to plump her up and get her iron levels up a little.

In other news, she is crawling like a madwoman and pulls up on me all the time. Hopefully this will soon translate into pulling up on other objects besides me. She is truly a joy to our family and we can't get enough of her! All of us, especially Holly, love her to pieces.

Vacation!

Okay, so I realized I am behind on posts. Like, way behind. What can I say? I have not felt like blogging lately. But I'm back, and I have lots to report! First, we went on vacation at the end of June.

We flew to Salt Lake City and took a side-trip to Pocatello, ID for a family reunion. This was our second flight with both girls, so I knew all the mistakes I made last time and fixed them. Things went much smoother this time around! Oh yeah...except for a screaming baby on flights there and back. I should say I fixed all the problems I had control over.

We bought Holly a backpack to fill with goodies for the trip. This is her the day before we left, thrilled with the backpack and the excitement of it all.

The family reunion was wonderful and took place at Andrew's cousin's house. She has a huge piece of land and lots of fun stuff for everyone to enjoy. They rented moonjumps for the kids which were great, but Holly's favorite thing by far were the chickens!

She also spent a few hours playing in this little stream. All the little girls were splashing and sorting through rocks and getting soaked to the bone. We were the only superstars who forgot both sunscreen and bathing suits for our kids. Did you know that the sun is actually stronger in Idaho than in Texas, because of the elevation? I did not.

Josie was happy to be the dainty, cute little one in the middle of everything. Luckily, Andrew took her inside and they napped the afternoon away on a couch. She didn't get sunburned.

Our hotel in Idaho was actually really nice. Here are the girls the morning after the reunion, watching Beauty and the Beast. Hungover from all the excitement and the sunburns. At this point in the trip, my camera battery died and I couldn't get it together enough to charge it. The rest of the pictures are taken with a high-quality iPhone camera.

We took a little trip to Discovery Gateway, an awesome children's museum in Salt Lake. Holly loved it! (Of course.) She got this shopping cart, filled it with goodies, and raced it all around. We played and played and played.

The last day of our trip, we went to Thanksgiving Point's Farm Country with some of our dear friends. The kids rode ponies, which was one of the highlights of our trip for Holly. She still talks about it.

We were so glad to get away for a few days! It wasn't nearly long enough, but we had a great time and hope to do it again soon! Hopefully someplace tropical, with white sandy beaches. A girl can dream, right?