Viv's Vitals

Vivan went in today for her 4 month check-up! Here's the stats:

Weight: 13 lbs, 2 oz (40th percentile)
Height: 24 3/4 inches (70th percentile)
Head: 39.8 inches (20th percentile)

I have no idea why Viv's head is so small, but, thankfully, it's not something you notice when you look at her in person (or pics). The doctor said we can go ahead and start rice cereal, which is not a moment too soon since she's getting hard to feed via breast AND bottle (the world is too exciting to look at and she gets easily distracted). The nurse was also amazed with how strong Viv seems. Aren't we all! She also got 2 shots, but took it like a champ--only one big scream. We'll see how she is when the Tylenol wears off...

Saucer-Eyes

Viv's 4 Months Young!!

It's hard to believe, but Vivian has finally hit that age where there's an actual, tangible reward for all this care-giving effort. The smiles at 2 months of age were sweet, but we wanted something more to make it seem REALLY worthwhile. Thankfully, Viv has just turned 4 months old, which I recall from last time, is when the fun really starts...and her special day was full of all kinds of surprises in her development.

It started out like usual at about 6:30am with her spitting up on me. The girl knows how to celebrate. Anyway, later that afternoon I put her in her saucer-thingy for the first time. (If you don't know what that is, imagine a walker without wheels and lots of toys attached to it.) Vivian got this bug-eyed look of amazement, like this is what life IS all about. It's the same look Phil gets when we walk in a record store. The poor baby is so eager to get to Lily's toys and to play with her big sister, but barely has the coordination to bat a toy in front of her. So, her world opened up wide today, being able to sit upright in the saucer (without propping), and make half-successful reaches for toys!

An hour later on the floor, Viv rolled over from her back-to-tummy--with the sole intention to get at a toy! Sure, she's been rolling over from tummy-to-back since 5 weeks of age, but that was more about just throwing her big ol' self around. Today, this rolling had a purpose. She's also started wiggling her legs in that "I'm gonna start scooting soon" fashion.

I guess I should be careful what I wish for, since it's pretty clear she's going to be crawling anyday now. I just hope that won't be the blog-posting for her 6th month birthday.

Diaper Size Matters

After about a year, Lily has finally moved up to a size 4 diaper!! To give you a little perspective, many kids are wearing size 4 diapers by the time of their first birthday, or soon thereafter. But that's not really the issue; we've always accepted that Lily is a wee small for her age. No biggie (pun intended!). Vivian also moved up a diaper size last week. The kicker is that for several days our almost-4 month old baby and our nearly-2 yr old toddler were wearing the same diaper size. Scary.

Night, Night!

This was a first. Last night, Lily and I were in the middle of her usual bedtime routine, got her PJs on and went down to the kitchen together to get her milk. I noticed that she didn't follow me to the kitchen like she usually does. Instead, I find her by the living room door, waving at Bebe and Ginger, going "Night-Night, Bebe. Night-Night, Ginger." She ran into the kitchen for a minute, then ran back to the living room door and repeated the "Night-nights." Guess she wanted to try out those new found language skills on the dogs.

Toddler Fashion

Apparently Lily doesn't know that boys will give you cooties

And stand up!

And sit up

Learned to smile!

The sibling rivalry will set in later

The Language Bomb

The language bomb has really begun exploding in Lily's brain. Just about everyday last week she opted not to take her afternoon nap so she could work on stringing a few words and/or syllables together. By this past weekend, Phil and I heard began to the fruits of her cerebral labor with words such as:

black shoes
white car, red car
Lily's crib!! (then, running to Viv's room) baby's crib!!

RAISINS!!!!!!!

Why Fat Dog Blog?

The main reason we're "blogging" is to keep the grandparents abreast of what Lily and Vivian are doing, since they don't get to see the kids that often. We will probably (hopefully) amuse a few friends along the way as well...

We decided to name our blog after a little song I made up about Ginger last year...one of the lines says, "Fat Dog, Fat Dog Dog/went online and wrote a blog." For our readers' sake, however, we're not going to be obnoxious and write the blog from Ginger's perspective. After all, it would pretty much be the same thing: "Day 15: That toddler pulled my tail again...."

The Viv