some new old pictures

some pictures from last weekend that i haven't gotten around to uploading yet:


she's very helpful when daddy's playing guitar hero.




the deer in our campsite, see it?




this takes a lot of concentration.




hugs :)

sloppy baby kisses

we get many of these a day now! she doesnt have the pucker or the kiss sound down... yet. but she is very careful to put her lips exactly on yours, and usually if you ask her for a kiss she'll give you one.
it's sooo sweet.
but then sometimes she sticks her tongue out...


here she was giving him kisses, but not with the camera out.



i was supposed to be chasing her.



here she is dancing to 'bananaphone.'

sophie's new favorite foods:

dill pickles
mild cheddar cheese
nectarines
pork

tornado!

those thunderheads weren't just thunderheads.... they turned into a tornado! dwayne was on post and he saw it form right in front of him! it went south really fast though.



aren't they cute?

thunder at midsummer

sophie loves watching the thunderheads just like i do.

a little off-subject, i am working on my final project for history of midwifery - if anyone knows of a good source for birth art (ancient times to present day) i would love to know about it.

birth stories

check out www.birthdiaries.com - i totally got sucked in last night in the homebirth section.

climbing

sophie can now climb up onto the couch all by herself:


nothing is safe anymore.

denver aquarium

here are a couple pictures from the aquarium:


sophie looking at the sharks....



...and sophie looking at the jellyfish.

we didn't take pictures at the museum or at the zoo! we kept forgetting the camera in the car.

energy

we got our electric bill and it was less than $50, not trying to brag or anything!
too bad its not clean energy.
we went to denver today, went to the aquarium again, the museum of natural history, and the zoo - will post pictures soon.

greener

this is what we have done lately to add to our "weirdness":


clotheslines on the porch....




a switch on the microwave to turn it completely off (easier than unplugging it)...




and compact flourescent bulbs in (almost) all our fixtures.


not that i'm already weird or anything.... cloth diapers... recycling... organics.... dwayne's army guy friends think i'm crazy.

earache

sophie had her 12-month well baby exam yesterday.... as usual it was an ordeal going to that place. and it seems like there is always something going wrong! sophie only weighs 17 lbs now - she was 20 lbs even when i weighed her on the baby scale in juneau, and that was only a couple weeks ago. so now she is back where she has always been - beneath the 5th percentile weight for height. and she has and ear infection - oh wait, "there's something going on in this ear, are you ok with starting antibiotics?" ummm, heck no! i looked at the american academy of pediatrics online and they say that antibiotics should not be started except in specific, very severe cases. and she didn't even diagnose a true ear infection, all she saw was redness. she didn't do the tympanoscopy to see if there was fluid behind the ear (the definition of an ear infection). i really have no faith in the doctors here. actually the one we saw isn't even a doctor, she's a physician's assistant.

so i'll call it an 'earache', since i guess that's probably what it is... i've been doing the hot/cold hydrotherapy and using willow/garlic ear drops, and last night we did the 'cold sock therapy' to increase her circulation and white blood cell production, and i'm also doing 'ear exercises' to encourage them to open up and drain........... she hates the hydrotherapy but she LOVES the ear drops, she fell asleep earlier when i was massaging them into her ears.

i saw a rheumatologist on tuesday and she put me on methotrexate - a drug that's used to treat leukemia patients, greeeaat. i see my opthamologist tomorrow, i sure hope it's working. anyways even if my eyes get totally better i have to keep taking the drugs for 2 YEARS afterwards...

this is when we were out camping last weekend, see how dirty her face is!



she waves bye-bye to him and then cries when he leaves in the morning now....


sophie still doesn't really say any words, although she did say DAISY once when we were in juneau. they said if she still doesn't say words by 15 months then they will start doing hearing tests and whatnot...

swimming

just lost my post! well here are the pictures again anyway -






it is the outdoor swimming pool in our apartment complex.... we made dwayne come with us on friday so he could take pictures :)