I've got a smart kid on my hands.

Now I have the proof Ella is a smarty pants.

I got her first report card along with the results of her first Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. Her results are as follows:

Word Analysis: 96th percentile
Language: 88th percentile
Mathematics: 99th percentile

CORE Total: 93rd percentile (which means she scored higher than 93 percent of kindergarten students nationally.)


She's just like her mommy. ~wink~

No cruising allowed.

Karl is starting to cruise around the furniture. Not much yet, but he'll take some small sideways steps before sitting down and crawling to where he wants to go. My guess is he'll be walking by the 1 year mark. He'll be 10 months old next Tuesday, so he's got 2 months to learn it. And he seems to be on the same time frame both girls were on.

I can already see one major difference between him and his sisters. This boy is a climber. I ~have~ to strap him the grocery cart when we go shopping because if he can stand up, he will. I have images of him falling out of the cart when my back is turned for 2 seconds.

I wonder if this is a difference between boys and girls or just the normal differences between babies. Only time will tell.

15% off coupon for gymboree

It's in today's newspaper, in the "P&G Brand Saver". It's right underneath the coupon for those tide stain boosters (which TOTALLY work, by the way).

It's valid through 12/24/09 so it's a good coupon to clip out and keep in your wallet for the next trip to gymboree.

Mother bird? (updated)

How many of you "mother bird" it for your baby? Do you know what I'm talking about? Chewing up food and then taking it from your mouth and letting your baby eat it. (okay, so mother birds actually regurgitate it first)

Am I the only one who does this? When Karl wants something I'm eating, but it's too hard for a baby with only 2 teeth to eat, I'll chew it up first and then take it out with my finger and let Karl eat it. When thinking about it, it sounds so gross and I can't believe I do it. But Karl doesn't mind it at all and he gets to try something new.

update - I reread this and it sounded way worse than what I actually do. I don't chew it up like ready-to-swallow food. I just bite it a few times with my front teeth until the pieces are small enough for karl to eat. I don't chew it all up with my molars or anything!

Poor kid. He'll probably gag at the thought if I told him about it when he's older, but for now, he's my little baby bird and he likes it. Today, he got to try caramel bugles. And he loves them!

Another new food for him today was strawberries. I know we aren't supposed to give strawberries until a year old and I looked it up. Here is what I learned ...

• 1. Children under 1 yr of age are more susceptible to develop allergies when introduced to certain foods too early. Strawberries are just one of the more likely foods to develop food allergies.

• 2. All children are different, but up until 4-6 months of age their digestive system is not developed enough to handle any kind of foods other then formula or breast milk. Strawberries and citrus fruits are extremely hard on their sensitive tummies and will make a very irritable baby as they work out the natural acids in these fruits.

So the second thing shouldn't be a problem since he's almost 10 months old. But the first one may be a valid thought. None of my other kids have food allergies, so hopefully karl won't have any either.

I didn't baby bird the strawberries though. I gave it to him through his mesh feeder and he chowed down on it. He absolutely loved it!

Regardless of my disregard for the rules, I'll never give him honey though. That rule is definitely something I'll adhere too! (Honey may contain bacterial spores that can cause infant botulism.)

Love and Understanding

I just got done watching Schindler's List and I want to run to Ella's school, pull her out and just hug her.

The horrors of what happened during the Holocaust is not new information to me, but everytime I see anything of what happened - movies, print, pictures - I'm just horrified. It's not just the Holocaust, it's racism (against ~any~ race), treatment of native americans, everything. My heart just hurts there were (and still are) people in this world who can hate a person based on their race or hell, anything at all. There is still so much hatred in the world and my heart weighs so heavy at times.

I hear ~a lot~ that people can't stand to bring babies into such a world. But what I think, is we need to bring MORE babies into this world (I know my audience, I know we're all trying!) and raise them to be better people. The more children we raise with love and understanding, the smaller the percentage of people raised with hate in their veins.