Anyway, today was Halloween, so here are a bunch of pics. We finally have our Star Wars Halloween stuff together. Next year, Ellie will probably want to be a doctor though and our careful planning will all be for naught….
To give you an update on the girls, Cali is HUGE! She will be 9 months in just over a week. She is almost 18 pounds (if not over). Her thighs are so big that I cannot wrap my hand around them. Of course, I haven't been able to do that for a while. She finally started solids on a regular schedule last week. I was just doing lunch and dinner, but she's stopped nursing when she wakes up and this morning she got downright cranky, so today we introduced breakfast. I'm starting to find it hard to offer her variety. I have a personal challenge to not buy any jars of baby food. It's pretty easy to blend up what we eat or to mash soft foods. However, we are also trying to do a little more baby-led weaning with her, so often I'm just putting soft foods on her tray. So far she has had: roasted broccoli (a favorite), persimmon, banana, avocado, blended gnocchi with butternut squash, pumpkin, sweet potato, tender dried apricots (another favorite), rice blend, roasted okra, and some others I'm sure I'm forgetting. The girl likes to eat. About the only thing she has outright refused is baby oatmeal with breast milk. To be fair, it's pretty disgusting cold. And, avocados. She eats them, but doesn't seem to care for them much. And, her hair is starting to come in. She might have actual hair by Christmas...
Ellie is progressing like gang-busters. She talks constantly. She sings too, but mostly to herself, so if you pay attention, she usually stops. Breakfast and lunch continue to be her favorite meals. Lately, she's been refusing to eat much of anything for dinner. She'll be moving up into the Preschool class in January. She starts her first extracurricular tomorrow. They opened Kindermusik up to toddlers (since she's almost not one anymore). I think she'll love it. Her big thing lately is tea parties. A friend recently gave her one as a "big sister" present and she won't stop playing with it. We get lots of invitations to tea, but as yet, I don't think anyone has been given leave to actually drink the tea. She is very bossy. I'm not sure where she gets that from ;)
I'm working on Tri Kappa publicity. It's a big proposition, but I'm having some luck engaging my committee. Unfortunately, everyone is scheduled to the eyeballs, so it's a little more challenging than other groups I've been in. Next up, I need to work on Marketing for the new restaurant, Main+Lincoln. I keep putting it off because the opening seems far off, but somehow I'll need to find balance or engage a sitter for a few more hours a week to get some things done. I've been trying to get to bed by 9 all week without success. On the upside, if I decide to go back to work in a few years, I think I can make a convincing argument that I stayed active in marketing while unemployed…
Rick was recently promoted to CEO. He's been pretty busy since. He'll be resuming his two-week long trips to Asia and Europe in 2014. I'm not looking forward to those. He's about to start work in earnest on Ellie's big Christmas gift, a dollhouse. Grandma Nancy is working on the dolls, and I have the task of finishing and decorating the dollhouse. I've actually had a reason to be on eBay and may have found a hobby for when I'm an empty nester (yes, I realize that's pretty far off). There is a whole other world out there made up of people who are SERIOUS about modeling small scale environments. It's pretty cool.
The power has been out for about an hour now, so before we lose internets too, I'll sign off. You'll have to use your imagination on the captions. Thanks for reading.
