4 Month Old Pictures

I'm a week late putting these up. I've just been busy around the house and hadn't gotten to publishing these.

Here's the one with him in his 4 month sticker shirt.


This was the first time we put him in his high chair. He seems happy enough about it.


"Mom, enough with the stupid things on my head already!"


And here Declan's all ready to go for his evening walk.


And finally...Houston...We have toes!!

We have a tripod sitter

Granted, he only managed to stay that way for about 3 seconds, but he did support himself.

Starting Solids

Declan's pedi gave us the go-ahead to start him on solids if we want to. I keep vacillating on the issue. On the one hand, waiting until 6 months makes it less likely he'll develop allergies, and it's just plain easier to feed him a bottle right now. It's easy, it's quick, and it's relatively mess-free.

On the other hand, he's more than doubled his birth weight, he can sit upright in his high chair, and he's eating 40 ounces of formula a day for the last 2 days. He's either in a growth spurt, or he's big enough he needs to start on some solids. I figure I'll give it another 2-4 days, and if he's still eating 40 ounces, I'll start him on some rice or avocado.

I think it'll be fun, and I'm excited to cook for him and try new things. I just know that after the initial fun, it'll be lots more work in prepping meals for him, because I don't want to use commercially prepared baby foods very much. I want to make most of his meals. And of course, having the camera near by to capture his expressions.

I do refuse to put cereal in his bottles, especially at night. Everything I've read says that giving them cereal in a bottle to help sleep is a myth, and you want the baby to associate solid foods with a spoon.

Busy weekend

Saturday, we made a trek to Ikea. We talked about getting a new bookcase for the computer area to store office supplies in, but I also wanted to get some baby stuff, and we just didn't have the budget for both. So I got all the baby stuff I wanted: another set of curtains to match the first pair, a play rug, a pillow that matches the decor of the nursery, some matching stickers, and Daniel got the little guy a wooden block toy. It's the kind with different colored wooden beads strung on colored, bent wires. Daniel was so bummed after putting it together when he read that the recommended age was 18+ months. But we put it next to Declan anyway, and he immediately started batting at the blocks. He likes looking and batting at it, so we count it as a score!

And we even got to eat meatballs for lunch. Yummy. And I successfully resisted the urge to eat the cookies and different candies there.

Sunday I got a lot done, and even more undone. We bought door latches for the cabinets, to start baby proofing the kitchen. However, the cordless screwdriver's battery charger stopped working, and for some reason, my corded screwdriver wouldn't drill the pilot holes into the cabinet doors. Are they made of metal or something? So I have drills all over one of my countertops until I get this sorted out.

Then I wanted to work on my rainbarrel, but once again, I didn't have the right tools. Without a battery, I can't use the jigsaw attachment on my cordless drill. I didn't find any curtain rods that I wanted at Ikea, so I can't hang up the curtains I got, and they didn't have the one set of curtains I did want there, to hang on the existing curtain rod. If that's confusing, don't worry. It happened because we changed where the baby's room was going to be. I did get the stickers up on the wall, but overnight, a couple of them fell off.

I hung some cute pictures on the wall, over the stickers, but now Daniel wants to rehang the door to that bedroom, so that we can close it off when the baby is sleeping and do stuff that makes more noise, like cook in the kitchen. I'm somewhat opposed though, because I like having that open wall space, and the baby needs to learn to sleep through daytime household activity. Plus at night, we keep it quiet, so it's not like the door will really help.

I have a list of stuff I need to get from Walmart and/or Home Depot, and I was going to stop on my way home. I even drove the truck into work today so I could stop. But guess what? I forgot my wallet at home. No cash, no credit cards. Guess I'm not going to do that. On top of that, the soda machine ate half my coins when I wanted a drink at lunch time. Maybe I'll just take off an hour early or so.

I also made more wheat bread from the no-knead recipe I found. I like it a lot. Very moist, very dense, but not brick-like, like a lot of whole-wheat breads I've made. Seriously thinking about ordering the book.

Declan's Four Month Doctor Visit

Overall, our little guy is doing just fine. He weighed 18 pounds 6 oz and was 24.5 inches long. I must have mis-measured him at 3 months. His weight is at the 95th percentile, length is 70th percentile and head measurement at 50th percentile. The doctor was very pleased at his consistency. He's been at those percentiles each time he's gone in, so she says he's doing very good.

She also said that he had very good fine motor control for his age. He was reaching for and grabbing his toys while we were there. No sign of wanting to roll over yet, but that will come in the next 2 months. He likes sitting up, another good sign, and he's vocalizing well. Plus he learned to do raspberries this past weekend, and he said 'baa', which is a new sound for him. Maybe because we say "ba ba" for his bottles every time he gets fed.

The down side is that he has eczema on his arm, chest and bottom. His cradle cap was caused by eczema, and the fact that he has a lot of ear wax is another symptom. Weird.

The pedi said we could start rice cereal anytime we wanted to in the next 2 months. He has excellent head control, so I just want to wait a little longer until he seems to grasp the idea of eating from watching us. We now sit him at his high chair for dinner with us every evening.

I think he's getting the 4-month wakefuls, as some other mothers put it. He was sleeping through the night for the last week or more, and doing so well. Then the last 2 nights, he's been up at 2 wanting to play or eat or something. Last night he devolved into a full blown screaming temper tantrum at 4 am, and neither Daniel nor I had any clue why.

Ugh, I hope this doesn't continue for long.

Declan videos

I captured a couple of cute videos of Declan the other day.

Here's one of him giggling like crazy as we tickle his belly and surprise him.


Here's one of him finding his toes on Tuesday. For those who care, take note of the wall color behind him. It's blue! It's not the horrible ugly red anymore (as seen in the previous video)! :)

No Knead Bread

Have to give props to this recipe that I tried this week. I saw a recipe for no-knead bread on Mother Earth News website and thought it sounded interesting. Made my first loaf today and it's pretty darn tasty. It's just a white bread, but it came out better than anything I've done in the bread machine, and almost as good as the honey-whole wheat I make occasionally. The recipe is set up so you can make a small loaf every morning or two, so you don't have a huge loaf going stale or moldy.

Back from Vacation - link to picture album

Yes, I know I haven't written anything in a long time. I was on vacation for 2 weeks, and during that time, we went to Illinois to visit the grandparents and when we got back, we spent 4 days repainting the baby's rooms. Then I found a new computer game and had to go back to work.

Anyway...

Here's the link to the picture album. I'll try to sort some out later.

Visit to Illinois Jul 09

The trip wasn't too bad. It was long; 2 days each way and about 18 hours total. Anytime we stopped, it seemed to take forever, even if it was just for gas and a bathroom break. The second day up there was bad. Declan cried and cried for almost the whole day. We were so glad to get there and hand him off to his grandmother while we unloaded the car.

While we were there, we went to Moonshine's for a burger. It's a little town with a population of 2, and they server great hamburgers (moonburgers) in a little country store. It was packed. Must have been 200 people there. We had tons of cousins there because it was a Burkybile family reunion that weekend. It was nice because I could hand Declan off to almost everyone else, and I never had to hold him.

Then we went to see Harry Potter. Honestly, not as good as I was expecting. It seemed slow. And we had burgers again, this time at White Castle, since there aren't any around here.

Saturday was the Burkybile family reunion at the park. It was a great time to see cousins I barely knew. Took my nephew Devin for a walk around the park.

Sunday I went geocaching with my dad and found 12 caches. I took a travel bug that wanted to go to Galveston, and I still need to put it out down here. I won't take it all the way to Galveston. I figure someone else should get that honor, since I brought it all the way from Illinois.

So glad to get Declan's room painted. His bedroom is a soft, robin's-egg blue, and the connecting playroom is a soft, buttery yellow. I don't have drapes up yet, and it's so very bright in there. It looks so, so, so much better than it used to. Still working on arranging the furniture and I don't have pictures up yet, but that will come soon.

New baby pics - hip baby

Here's my hip baby with his new sunglasses.

And just as hip in his swing...


I was playing around with black and white and sepia, and I like some of these pictures.





And a cute one of him with his daddy.

Long week

I had training for three days, then on my last day, I have to go to the eye doctor in the morning. So I can't work for 3 hours until my eyes un-dilate. Normally not a problem, but I'm on vacation for 2 weeks now, and I had a lot to get done. I'm still not done. I'll have to finish it up tonight or tomorrow.

I also pulled a muscle in my upper back, and it hurts like crazy. I seem to always be tweaking my back lately, and I hate it. I also need more eye drops for my right eye. Now I'm taking a glaucoma medicine. Not because I have glaucoma, but because it helps stabilize the pressure inside the eye and will help reduce the vision fluctuations I'm getting because of my old eye surgery.

My growing boy

We measured Declan at home today. He's up to 25.5 inches long and 18 pounds. That makes 4 pounds gained in the past month, and an inch and a half. Daniel says he's fat, but I don't think so. His legs are suitably chubby, but his midsection is fairly lean...for a baby.

He's been wanting to sit up the last week, and he definitely fusses if we leave him alone on his playmat too long. He can also hold his head level with his body when I pull him sitting upright with his arms. He has also learned to blow raspberries. Only done it a few times but he's getting the hang of it.

Today was a good day for Declan. He was in a good mood for almost 3 hours throughout the day. He giggled and laughed and cooed lots. Too bad I've misplaced my camera for a while. I know it's around, but I'm not sure where I put it. It's probably buried under a baby blanket somewhere.

Hot weather and sore backs

I hurt my back a couple of months ago, strained it pretty badly. I thought it was better, but yesterday, it flared back up again. Was especially hard to get up and down from sitting, and made it hard to put Declan down. Feels much better today, but with that warning twinge that says you're about one wrong move from having a really, really bad week.

The weather has been so miserable hot here. Even for Texas/Houston, it's been a very unusually hot and dry June. I think it hasn't rained in 2 months. This upcoming week's forecast shows 40-60% chance of rain every day, so I'm very hopeful the weather patterns have changed and we can get some rain soon. Everything in my yard is burning up. Plus the heat leads to some killer power bills. Ouch.

Yesteday, we drove downtown to a store called New Living. It's an eco-friendly, green hardware store. They carry no-VOC paint, cork, bamboo and linoleum flooring, all kinds of tile made from recycled glass and concrete, and natural beds and pillows. I tried the wool and natural latex pillow and fell in love with it. But it's $159, so it'll be a while before I can get one. They even had a paint consultant to help us pick out colors. I always tend to go too dark on color, so she help me pick out colors that would hopefully be what I wanted without going too drastic.

Expensive Ice

I called Sears to come fix our refrigerator last week. The ice maker hadn't been working since Ike. I thought some ice had gotten frozen in the system somewhere. Turns out the motor had burned out. I don't even want to think about how expensive it was. I could have bought bags of ice for 2-3 years instead. Ouch.

He made a liar out of me.

I was just bragging to my mom about how well Declan goes to sleep. I give him his bath, then swaddle him and give him his bedtime bottle. He falls asleep while finishing it, and I rock him a little bit, then put him in his crib and he'll stay asleep until 2 or 4 or 6. You never can tell. But he will sleep at least 6 hours.

Until tonight. About an hour after I put him down, he started screaming. Turned out he had wiggled one hand loose from his swaddle, pulled out his paci, and realized he was still hungry. My goodness, you'd think he was starving, but he'd just eaten 4 ounces. Crazy kid.

After another 4 ounces, he's swaddled again and back to sleep. Let's hope that holds him until 6 tomorrow morning.

Very cool planet video

Check this out. It's very cool, showing the relative sizes of objects in the universe.

Declan's 3 Months Old

He's getting big(ger)!



He's reaching some new milestones, too. He wants to sit up so badly now. He's always doing little baby crunches, and he's happiest when he's sitting in mommy or daddy's lap and can look around. Here his is in his new Bumbo chair. At first, I thought they were stupid, but now I think they're a great thing. The chair supports him all around so he can practice sitting up. The first time, he could only handle it for about 30 seconds. Now he's up to 4-5 minutes at a time in his chair.


He's also getting a lot better at tummy time. I think it helps that he can hold his head up steady when he's on his tummy. We have toys and books in the crib for him to look at while he's doing his tummy time.


We're also starting to figure out a schedule. He doesn't stick to it every day, but often enough we can usually predict what he's going to do. He's up around 6 am for a big bottle, then play time for 30 minutes, and then nap time while I head to work. Daniel takes over, and he eats around 10 and 2. According to Daniel, Declan spends most of the morning whining and fussing unless someone is paying attention to him. I think our son is a little ham.

I get home at 5, and he's usually asleep for an hour. A bottle at 6, followed by some playtime, then bath at 7:30, followed by his big bedtime bottle. We've only had a 50% or less success rate of him sleeping through the night. More often than not, he wakes up between 2 and 4 and wants a couple of ounces. If he doesn't get them, he proceeds to scream bloody murder until he does.

Happy Father's Day

Declan and I worked on a present for Daniel this weekend. Well, I worked, and he posed.

I got some letters that spelled out D-A-D, painted them, and then put them with Declan to take pictures. Poor guy was probably blinded by all the pictures that I took, but I got a few nice ones. Had them printed out a Walmart and put them in a picture frame for Daniel. He also got some chocolate peanut butter ice cream. :)

The tomatoes I never knew

Went to a small farmer's market in Nassau Bay this morning. It was hot, and Declan cried after about 4 minutes of being in his car seat, so I didn't spend a lot of time at the market.

We did buy some grass-fed beef (hamburger and a roast), some local organic tomatoes, a ginger cookie, some carrot salsa, some yard eggs from healthy hens with lots of room to roam and play, and some organic lettuce.

So tonight, we had burgers on the grill with our fancy grass-fed beef. Wow. It did taste better. Maybe I was imagining some of it, but I really do think it tasted better than the store bought stuff.

We are seriously considering buying a side of local grass-fed beef, but not until we get a deep freeze, and not until hurricane season is mostly over. I'd hate to lose a thousand dollars of meat and veggies due to a hurricane, and we don't have a generator.

But the most incredible thing was the tomatoes. Now, I'm not a fan of tomatoes. When I was a wee tot, I had a battle of wills with my babysitter over eating a tomato in my vegetable soup. I couldn't leave the table until I ate it. I was still sitting at the table when my mom came to pick me up. My fondness for them hasn't improved a whole lot, but I will eat them cooked. I usually hate them raw.

Well, I sliced one of the local tomatoes up to have on our burgers. It was incredible! It was so yummy that I ate the entire tomato by myself. Raw. I have never, ever done that. I know that store-bought tomatoes are hard and tasteless, but I never knew fresh, local tomatoes could taste so incredible. I'm a convert now. I think I'll go back to the farmer's market next week and buy a bunch of tomatoes and can them for later this year. I don't want to eat store bought tomatoes anymore.

Declan discovers cause and effect - pull toys

I'm experimenting with video on here. Let's see if it works.

Declan discovered that his pull toy on his car seat goes up and down, and he can pull it down, and it goes back up again. Wow!

Just some more miscellaneous pictures

I found a set of baby art cards on Amazon. They're black and white on heavy cardstock, and they show animals and insects. I got a mobile hanger and finally got them hung up over his crib. He loves to stare up at them. I just can't wait to repaint the nursery. Ugh, I hate that ugly red. Waiting until paint goes on sale again.



Here's Declan watching Daddy play on the computer.

His hands are growing, but still so small next to mine.

Feet, too.

My friends at work, Jo and Courtney, brought Declan back a present from their trip to Kennedy Space Center.


Here he is at 10 weeks old. He's about to outgrow his cradle.


Play time with Daddy.


That shirt says it all.

A Day in Declan's Life Through Pictures

I thought I'd document a day in Declan's life. It's a pretty typical day. Actually, I think just about every day is like this, now that it's so hot out. We don't do our mornings in the parks anymore. By 8 am, it's just way too hot to be out for any length of time.

By the way, note how many different outfits he goes through in one day. Yep, that's typical.

Morning. It's my job to get up and get him changed and give him his morning bottle.

Stretchy time:


Then time for the breakfast bottle while lying in the Boppy pillow.


Then he's awake for 30-60 minutes and in a good mood. Usually. This morning, it was playtime on the playmat, batting at his rattle-y toys. This one is Zed the Camel. So named by Carolyn when she came to visit.


After an hour or so, he gets whiny and cranky, so it's nap time. Declan pretty much naps only in his swing right now. Thank goodness for that swing. It's a lifesaver.


At this point, I go to work, and it's up to Daniel to take care of him until I'm done for the day. So after his nap. Declan's hungry again. Daniel takes the opportunity to catch up on the previous night's Daily Show and Colbert Report. Declan always has this dazed look when he's getting burped.


Next...you guessed it. Nap time in the swing again.


After Declan wakes up late afternoon, he and Daddy play around. Today it was going for a horse-ride around the house. I think that's the first time he's ridden on Daddy's shoulders.


He's cranky again, so we'll try another nap. This time, we'll see if he can nap in his crib.


Nope, he's not happy. I'm not sure what led to this sequence of pictures, but it's funny.


Normally Declan gets his bath at 7:30, but he just wasn't tired tonight. I needed a walk to help my back feel better, so we loaded him in the stroller to take a walk at 8pm, when it was marginally cooler. We have those Off clip-ons, and they actually seem to work pretty well. Little guy goes about as naked as we can manage for the walk.


Then it's bath time:



And bed time. First a new onesie:


And then swaddled. That's the only way he sleeps. I hope he grows out of it soon, but for now, every time he waves his arms around, he wakes himself up.


Ah. Now Mom can have a glass of wine and put her feet up. Nope, no pictures of that.

Good night, little guy.

That was a long week

It was my first full-time week back at work, and it was both kinda long. Daniel said it was even longer for him.

I have a great teleworking schedule. I had originally set it up because I planned to breastfeed, and I didn't want to have to pump at work all the time, every day of the week. Unfortunately, Declan had other plans and refused to breastfeed. So we're bottle feeding now, but I'm still doing the teleworking. It helps me a lot because I can spend an extra half hour at home in the morning, and that's just when he is finishing his bottle and going back to bed for a nap. So Daniel can sleep for another hour or two while I'm working and Declan's napping. It's good for Daniel since he's the one who gets up in the middle of the night to feed or soothe him.

There are some downsides of working at home though:
1) People think you are goofing off. I admit, the temptation is stronger, but I actually work more at home because I feel guilty if I don't get a lot done. In the office, I think I spend more time talking to people and being less productive.
2) It's harder to just catch up with someone. You can send an email or voicemail, and it's not bad, but sometimes, you just want to ask someone a quick question and show them something.
3) The phones for meetings aren't very good. I had a couple of meetings via phone, and I couldn't hear everyone in the room because they were sitting too far from the room.
4) I hear the baby crying even with the door closed and the fan on. It is distracting.
5) I want to go play with the baby. But I content myself with peeking in on him when I get a drink or go to the bathroom. Sometimes his dad brings him in to say hi when he's in a good mood.
6) I need a better office chair. Here's my office set up:


The good things:
1) I save an hour a day in commuting time.
2) I don't have to dress up every day, which is good considering I still don't fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes.
3) I get to take peeks at my baby during the day. When I'm at work, I don't call home much because I never know if it's a bad time to call or not. And there's no video when I call home.
4) No one taking up all my time at work. That happens quite a lot, just in misc hallway convos and such.

Maybe making progress on sleeping through the night

Declan was a bottomless pit last night. He ate 11 ounces before bedtime, when he normally eats 4-6 ounces at a feeding. I hoped he would sleep straight through, but apparently not. He got up at 2 am and Daniel fed him 2 more ounces. He woke again at 4:30 am, but put himself back to sleep. That's a major improvement! It's the first time he's soothed himself back to sleep at night without getting fed.

Things I need to do

Take Declan to the pool and get him used to swimming.
Go check out a couple of local farmer's markets this Saturday.
Make some soft blocks for Declan as toys.
Make a baby book of animal silhouettes.
Find time to exercise.
Finish arranging our sitting room.
Move the table to the playroom and get rid of this big, old TV.

Long days and crying babies

I don't know what got into Declan last night. Maybe I shouldn't have given him that bottle at 11 pm, when he was sleeping. He woke up at 3:30 and wanted to be fed, but he didn't eat very much. Then I got him up at 6 am, since we're trying to get him on a schedule that's compatible with my work. But he would'nt eat very much, and he would not go back to sleep. I know he was tired, because he was yawning and rubbing his eyes. But when I put him in his swing, the place he loves to nap, he started crying really loudly. We went back and forth from the changing table, to the bottle, to the swing, to walking around. Nothing worked. He cried for an hour and a half, non-stop. Finally, he woke Daniel up, and I had to go to work. So I got to escape, while Daniel took care of him. He said it took a long time for Declan to settle down and go to sleep.

Then all day, he hasn't slept much and he hasn't eaten much. Plus he's been spitting up much, much more than normal. Argh, why are babies so confusing?!

At work today, everyone seemed to assume that I'd be crying about leaving the baby at home. Not this morning. :) Besides, I know he's in good hands.

Lasagna

I got ambitious last night and made lasagna from Tyler Florence's recipe. It was good, but not great lasagna. I think our consensus was less ricotta, more sauce, and more saucy sauce. It was too dry, overall. And a little more mozzarella. But it was good enough that we kept it for leftovers.

Big days for Michelle and Declan. Daniel, too.

Monday was my first day back at work after my maternity leave. I'm only working half days this week, to ease myself back into it. Declan didn't cooperate Sunday night; he woke up at 4:30 am screaming. I forget why. Daniel said it had something to do with giving him water, then he got wet, or got his swaddle blanket wet, or something. I pulled the pillow over my head, but sleeping was out of the question. Anyway, I got him up again at 6 for a bottle, and by 7, he was back in his swing, napping away.

The first thing I had to do was reset all my passwords. That done, it was on to email, voicemail, and regular mail. Only 3 voice mails, and only 700 emails. Not bad for being out 2 months. I spent all morning on my email, and by the time I left at noon, I had it down to 59 emails. Pretty darn good, I think. Of course, I did it by being ruthless about old emails that I'd been hanging on to. I figured, if I hadn't fixed it after 4-5 months and the person hadn't called me back, I could delete it.

And of course, I had to show off pictures of Declan to all my office coworkers and talk to them about how he was doing.

Declan's big accomplishment yesterday was grabbing his pull toy and pulling it down, then letting it spring back up, then pulling it down again. I think he might have started figuring out cause and effect. He played with that toy for at least 10 minutes. It was very cute.

And Daniel's big day consisted of taking care of Declan all morning. Plus he did laundry!

Baby in a bar

Thursday night I met up with an old friend of mine from Virginia. She traveled to Houston for work, and we got to meet up for dinner. We ended up going to Boondoggles, a local pub. I brought Declan so Kristen could see him. I was a little worried that we would cry and be upset, and he was. The noise in the pub upset him at first, then he calmed down. Turned out the pub was a great place to go with a screaming baby. It was so loud, no one could hear him scream except me and Kristen, and he was yelling for all he was worth for a while. Only downside is that there's no good place to change a diaper in the pub. Guess they don't expect babies in there very much.

Overhaulin' and Hair Stylin'

Just wanted to throw up a couple of pictures from last week.

Here's Daniel, finding a convenient new way to carry Declan through the house.


And I had fun styling Declan's hair the other day. I think punk rock agrees with him.

Declan is two months old!

Wow, two whole months, and we haven't done anything horrible to our child. He's survived, and we haven't dropped him or anything. Well, he did hit his head on the floor one day, but he only cried for a couple of minutes. Since then, we've put his play mat on a folded up blanket for more padding.

Just in the last few days, he's started batting at his soft toy on the play mat. I think he's starting to make the connection that he can make it move or even grab it on occasion.

Daniel and I think Declan may be left-handed. He bats at his toy with his left hand, and he sucks on his left hand. We'll see. His baby acne is clearing up, and he's starting to look like the typical cute baby you see in commercials. We finally gave him some infant Tylenol the last couple days, and his fussiness has almost disappeared. He's content to lay on his play mat and bat at his toy, or to coo back and forth with Daniel and me for 20-30 minutes. Or maybe he's just finally getting some good naps in. We have been pretty busy the last couple weeks, and it may have prevented him from getting the sleep he needed during the day.

Want to see some cute baby pics?

It's starting to get more fun to play with him. He grins and coos back at us.






It's not all grins and giggles, though. Just three seconds earlier, he was beaming and squirming, then boom, he wants his bottle, and he lets you know it. Loudly.

Thoughts on the futility of home baking

While Carolyn was here, I picked up a couple pounds of fresh cherries. I got more than I would eat, so I decide to bake something with them. I ended up making a cherry pie. I pitted all the cherries, rolled out a double pie crust, followed the directions in my Betty Crocker cookbook for a cherry pie, and baked the most perfect looking pie I think I've ever made. It was perfectly golden brown and flaky. It looked great until I cut into it. Then it was soupy, the cherries hadn't softened completely, and worst of all, there were lumps of granulated sugar in the cherry juice.

Take another favorite of mine: brownies. I was at Target the other day, and they were selling 6 mini brownie bites for $0.99.

Consider that it would cost me at least that much to purchase ingredients to make brownies, plus the time to bake them. I could pick up a can of cherry pie filing for a couple bucks and make my own pie crust. Or if I didn't want to do any work at all, I could buy a cherry pie already made for about $8-9, and it cost me over $13 for the fresh cherries.

So I have to ask myself sometimes, why would I bother baking anymore? It almost doesn't even seem worth it. The only reason would be to make something that the store doesn't, some family recipe passed down through the years.

And why is it that bad-for-you calories have to cost so much less than good-for-you calories? Brownies for 99 cents versus a dollar fifty for an organic apple. Something is very wrong with this picture.

Oh, and the cherry pie? I had one slice and threw the rest out. It wasn't even worth saving just the cherries out of it.

Bye Carolyn, and Thanks for All the Help

It was very nice to have my friend, Carolyn, visit for a long weekend. Unfortunately, we took all the pictures with her camera and I didn't have a chance to get the pictures off of it before she had to leave. So Carolyn, send me your pictures!

I think she managed to visit while Declan was at his absolutely fussiest he's been. I think his vaccinations last week made him crabby for days. We finally gave him some infant Tylenol and ever since then, he's been in a much better mood.

We went to Galveston and ate at Cafe Michael Burgers, a local eatery that made really good burgers. We ate on the second floor porch overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Then we drove to the west end of the island to see how much had been rebuilt since Ike and stopped at a couple of the pocket beaches. Didn't put my toes in the water though. There were a bunch of jellies washed up on shore.

Carolyn was a great help while she was here. It was nice to have someone to talk to like we used to when I lived in Virginia. I'm glad she came down, and I think it was good for her, too.