Pediatrician: Cale at Nine Months

Cale turned nine months old yesterday, and had his pediatrician visit for his well-child checkup this afternoon. Stripped down, Cale is 19 pounds 14.9 ounces (so close to 20 pounds!), 28.5" tall, and 18.5" head circumference. For his appointment, he flirted with his nurse and his doctor, and he nursed. He's up to date on his immunizations, so no shots this time. (With his egg allergy, he can't get the regular flu shot.) So until next time ...

After The Trip

It's much colder here, but it's nice to be home again too. I'm trying to think about what was new for this trip. Karston now associates candy with parade floats, and he especially likes lollipops (blue is good!) and small tootsie rolls. Karston ran circles for his letter O dance several times. Cale really does look a lot like Karston when he was this size, but we were still surprised when someone asked us if the boys were twins. Hmm, only one boy is walking and talking... Cale has gotten quite good at leaning for toys, and scooching, and rolling. You have to be really careful where you set him now; no edges and no dangerous items within a two or three foot radius! He ends up on his tummy, holding himself up with his arms, but he's not sure what to do next (crawl!) so he gets bored (his hands aren't free to grab) and quickly cries to be picked up. I think Cale is ready to start crawling soon!

White String Cheese

Last night, in his sleep, Karston said, "No, white string cheese!" At home, he quit eating white string cheese (mozzarella) in favor of yellow (cheddar) a while back. Luckily he decided to go back to white on this trip, because that's the only color I've seen in the various stores. Apparently he's so serious about this switch, he's talking about it in his sleep!

Back Hurting

All afternoon, Karston said his back was hurting. We listened with an adult filter, and assumed that his back was sore from sleeping on a strange bed, as is so often the case for traveling adults. Ha! We went to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park this morning, and Karston got a sunburn on his back just above his diaper. We noticed the sunburn when changing his clothes for bed this evening, and Karston pointed to it as the area where his back hurt. Then he wanted to see the red color in the mirror so he could know what sunburn looks like.

We need to work sunscreen under the diaper's edge too, but it's such a struggle to get any sunscreen on Karston that doing it right is probably wishful thinking if we want to have any hearing left. Like an annoying parent, whenever he said his back hurt this evening, I told him that's why we wear sunscreen! Maybe that will help a little with sunscreen application next time ... nah, that implies toddler logic!

Fort Zachary Taylor State Park has some of the nicest laid-back park rangers. I assume they know they have it made! I wish FZT could keep those nice shade pines: Cale took a nap in the shade while I read a book next to him; Karston and Daddy played with another family in the surf. We learned as we were leaving that the FZT snack bar now serves beer with their lunches (wow!), and even has a water toy exchange! We didn't bring any water toys on the airplane. What a park!

Travel with Children

One of the lessons for travel with children is not to over-plan your trip. In fact, you'll be lucky to get one accomplishment per day, and you need some unscheduled days in between to recover. Today was one of those recovery days. Karston kept wanting something back at the treehouse, so we kept turning back. We went back three times before lunch, and updated our morning plan to be to get somewhere for lunch.

Letter "O" Dance

Karston says he's doing the letter "O" dance; to the uninitiated, this looks like he is running around in tight circles. I assume the dance name is homage to Sesame Street. Since he hasn't had a nap yet this trip, we're happy to let him run off energy in the hopes that he will sleep well tonight so that we can sleep well.

Birthday Tooth

For my birthday, I wanted to get lots of sleep, and to get over this lingering nasal drip. Well, so much for sleep: Cale just cut Tooth #8 today. I felt around for it yesterday and it hadn't poked through; today it has. Now I can say my baby is eight months old and has eight teeth, for whatever that's worth. Cale's more interested in chewing on everything in sight than he is in fussing; he's fussing a little bit but is overall much happier than most teething babies. I wonder if he's getting used to teeth popping through?

A Christmas Parade

When we arrived in Key West, I wanted to start off with my usual fish sandwich. Guess what? Iguana Cafe is back! I missed their fish sandwich last time in Key West (when it was a hurricane-toppled-large-tree-left-huge-hole hole in the ground), so I was glad to see it again! Yummy. Karston and Cale ate french fries. This time last year, I could count the number of times Karston had had french fries on the fingers of one hand; now we know they are a good way to get calories in him! We decided to let Cale try french fries since he enjoyed boiled potatoes at Thanksgiving so much. A hit with both kids! Karston was so much older than Cale is now before he had fries ... all those lost calorie opportunities!

The cabbie who picked us up at the airport told us we should take the kids to the Christmas parade tonight. Wow. I had no idea what to expect, but I certainly didn't expect a parade that lasted almost two hours and had almost 80 floats! We also didn't expect that the floats would be tossing candy to the kids. Karston perfected the starving little waif expression, with his hand held out. Couple of candies, sure, whatever, toss 'em in my pocket. By the time both pockets in my shorts (yes! shorts at night in December! guess why I'm glad to be here?) were full, I realized that we were in for much more candy than I anticipated. I guess that's why we have a stroller with a basket below.

The Wi-Fi signal at our treehouse is weak, but who needs solid Internet access when you're on vacation?

Before The Trip

Since we're about to spend a week in Key West, I'll watch to see what new things the boys do. This week they already started doing new things!

Karston has started to ask WHY? all the time. By all the time, I mean he asks why again and again, without noticing that he's hit reductio ad absurdum. I went to school for a long time, and I can adroitly break questions down to smaller and smaller parts, but a toddler doesn't know the wall of elemental reduction (or the wall of "I'm not going to go any farther") so it's why why why. He's been doing this for a week ... maybe two.

Cale still isn't walking, but he loves propelling himself around in his walker. This week he changed that repertoire, though: he would walk away from people in order to explore. Cale is a very social baby, very likely to follow people for attention, so heading away from everyone seems significant.

Back to packing ... clothes for all, enough food and diapers for the boys until we can buy more, and small toys for the boys to amuse them on the plane. We could pack so lightly for just us, but we're packing toys, boo-boo fixin's, a double stroller, and a baby backpack!