Baby care

I know it's 3 months since Rachel was born, but I just barely learned some handy baby care tips that would have been very useful for her first 3 months of life. My old roommate, Wendi, passed on these bits of wisdom to me. I'm sure Rachel's next 3 months will be a lot safer than her last 3 because of these helpful tips. Hopefully someone else out there will find these helpful, too.

Taxes

It's tax time! Woohoo! So last fall I took this free class offered by Jackson Hewitt to teach how to do taxes--that's how they recruit tax preparers each year. The books were decent, the teaching was about what you could expect from a free class. But anyway, I learned some good stuff, and did our taxes this year (just like I always do). And all I can say is kids are profitable. Jacob never turned in a W-4 to adjust the withholdings since before we were married, so all year the government has been earning the interest that we could have been earning. But it does make for a very happy little surprise right now. He's since turned in a new W-4 and significantly increased his take home pay each paycheck. But in the meantime we benefit from our little tax deduction with a few shopping sprees. We plan on getting our food storage built up--as much as we have room to store in our house, and getting a few fun things, like an SLR camera, a new freezer, and such. Yea for tax returns!

Our weekend in Provo was a lot of fun. It was great to hang out with the fam and give Rachel a chance to hang out with them all, and to meet the cats, which were a new experience for her. The cold air was also a new experience. She doesn't own any warm clothes besides long sleeved shirts and pants, and one jacket. Luckily we own blankets. Here she is getting bundled up to go out into the cold.

And here Jacob is getting bundled up for the cold. Or something.

drool

We found a bumbo seat on craigslist the other day, so we put Rachel in it to see how she likes it, and she really seemed to enjoy it. The only thing is she drooled like a rabid dog. Check her out foaming at the mouth. But she's still so cute.
And now we're off to Provo for a nice long President's Day weekend. We might be a little crazy leaving 70 degree weather for freezing weather. But Rachel wants to go visit her other set of grandparents and her aunts and uncles up there.

Schizophrenic Baby

Here is a funny video of Rachel talking to herself in the mirror. Usually when she looks in the mirror when I'm holding her she just stares at herself, or smiles at me, but today she was smiling at herself, and talking to herself a bit. It was pretty funny. Unfortunately I don't think you can really hear her saying "goo" very well when she's talking. That very last bit is especially cute.

Cute pics

Here's just a couple of cute pictures I finally unloaded from our camera. Since we got a camcorder for Christmas, we have been using that a lot more than our camera, although I still try to make sure and take regular pictures every once in a while.
Anyway, here's Rachel in her muscle shirt-I think this was the last time she could fit in this shirt because it got too tight for her chubby little torso.Check it out--little dark haired girl is now little blondie. All the dark hair on the front part of her head has fallen out, and the blond hair is coming in strong. She still has a yarmulke (I had no idea it was spelled like that--I thought yamaka, or something) of dark hair that hasn't fallen out, but in this picture you can mostly only see the blond hair. Isn't she cute?

Crib party

If you want to see some high quality cinematography here's the video for you! Or maybe not. But at least Rachel is pretty cute in it. She's getting bigger every day. This is from a week or two ago. Last week we had her 2 month appointment at the doctor and that was a bit traumatic for both of us--she got her shots. She didn't like that all that much. But she did okay once we got home; mostly just slept the day away, and woke up every once in a while to eat, then go back to sleep. She also got her weight checked, and she's gained 3 pounds since birth (she was 11 lbs 14 oz, up from 8 lbs 15 oz)--not the 4 pounds that is average, but she started bigger than average, so she didn't need to gain as much. She's still right around the 70th percentile for both her weight and height. Anyway, enjoy the video.

Hand eating

Rachel has discovered her hands and she is so very excited about it. She's not quite sure how to separate out the fingers yet, so she just sucks on the whole hand. She'll also spend a few minutes at a time just looking at her hand and watching it move. Here's yet another cute video--she's talking and eating her hand and smiling more and more every day. Today she actually smiled at the elephant on her bouncy seat--her first time smiling that is not in response to another smile. And since Stephanie mentioned she liked watching me act like a fool in that last video, here's one with Jacob to balance things out. :)

In other news, last Wednesday she accidentally rolled over from her tummy onto her back all on her own. I don't think she realized that she actually controlled the rolling over, and she hasn't done it since, although today she was getting pretty darn close. A friend of mine said her son rolled over twice in one day, then didn't do it again for at least 2 weeks. I guess it looks like Rachel will follow suit.