Marah ate her first bit of rice cereal this morning. There were mixed reviews. To be honest, I can't blame her. I tasted the stuff (a sample back of Nestle with the formula already in it) and blech. Smelled like rice crispies, tasted like slightly sweetened crap.
I picked up a box of regular old rice cereal and we'll see how that goes with her usual milk added to it.
And now for more Marah goodness, from naptime, to holding her feet (her new favourite game), to the cutest face ever.

And someone to wipe the drool off her chin.
Again.
The teething continues, unabated. The hands go in the mouth, the screaming begins. Sometimes, there is screaming that stops with Tylenol (she has learned to love that fake cherry taste) and then there is screaming that stops only when her father dances and sings nonsense.
That makes life difficult when he's not here.
Luckily, he was here yesterday because the school board actually cancelled school. Do you know how often that happens? Can you say 'never'? I knew you could.
Anyway, our free day, where the weather wasn't that bad (though the department of transport was warning that the highways were very icy), was spent inside. We had showers, I watched the last twenty minutes of hte movie I slept through. We meant to watch the extended version of Sin City, and ended up watching the original again. It was still good. We watched a bunch of special features, including the director making breakfast tacos.
Bill put together most of his portfolio online for the jobs he's applying for, and I tidied the apartment and folded loads and loads of laundry. Then, Aaron called and we went to Pierre Jean Jase for dinner.
Pierre Jean Jase is this little cafe that has burgers and fries in the evening. They are not just burgers, though. I had a veal burger with goat cheese, tomato and homemade mayo. Yum. The fries are served with more homemade mayo. And then I had a piece of the chocolate "pie," which to me more closely resembles a flourless chocolate cake. Cake or pie, no matter, because it is delicious.
Oh, yeah, and how's Marah? Great. She sat on Bill's lap for a few minutes, then fell asleep in her car seat, and stayed that way even through some rather loud crashes and bangs.
She is a good baby, as long as she does all the screaming at home.

We're back!
I'm starting to catch up on all the things I've been intending to do for the past week. It was hard with Bill here because we were either out running errands, or we were doing something... like watching all the episodes on a disc of Arrested Development Season 2 in one afternoon.
It was vacation well-spent.
Marah's doing well, considering her stubborn teeth cause her misery nearly every night, but never actually appear.
See her chewing her hand and drooling (hence the bib)? That's every day now for about three weeks.
She's learning lots of new tricks - rolling half-way over, grabbing glasses, sitting up with just a little support. She pushes herself up now when she's on her stomach. At some point, she'll manage it when her knees are under her, and then, then we will be in trouble.
We have almost all our CDs moved out of the wobbly CD stand and into cute storage boxes from Ikea (we actually need another couple of boxes... we have too many CDs). We have not found new places for my ceramic rabbit collection, nor for the last pile of VHS tapes. What we really need is an entertainment cabinet. Someday...

Marah slept through last night - eight whole hours straight. It figures: Bill had to get up at 4 a.m. (when Marah normally would have woken up) to go to the school.
That's right - 4 a.m. His school is hosting the CBC morning show (which is out of Quebec City) for their annual Santa call-in show. Santa's at the school right now taking phone calls and kids from the school are dropping in early to sit on Santa's knee.
Bill - Bill seems to just be supervising, as he's been doing since 4:30 a.m. I woke up at 6:30.
At three months, Marah is starting to roll over (which she finds very frustrating, since she can only get half-way). She's developed a love for the baby swing, and delights in swatting the toys hanging from her baby gym. She's loved staring at her reflection in the mirror for about a month. She also talks to us in the morning - coos and other sounds.

We have no hot water.
I was wondering what people did back before electricity (and, in our case, oil heat) to get their hot water.
And it dawned on me: wood stoves. You could leave a pot on a wood stove and have hot water all day.
No cold baths for those babies.
Of course, I just have an electric stove, but as long as the electricity doesn't cut out, we're fine for heating water until they fix the problem.

It just means I may be a little grungy when we head out to Bill's staff party tonight. There's no way I'm going to try to heat up enough water for a bath. We do not have enough large pots to make it worth it.

Marah survived her first round of immunizations last week, though she did have a mild fever and a rather cranky afternoon. Can't complain too much, though - she slept almost seven hours straight that night from the exhaustion.
She has a little bit of a cold right now, and has been particularly snuffly at night. Unfortunately, the snuffly sounds she makes in her sleep are the same snuffly sounds she normally wakes as she's waking up at night, leading to some sleeplessness for Bill. And for a couple of false starts, where I was handed a baby who was not actually awake at all.
Marah also had her follow-up cardiac ultrasound yesterday, which she wiggled through, trying to grab the wand. And when she was restrained, she cried. Fun for everyone! But the hole is smaller, and the cardiologist thinks the whole will be completely grown over by the time she's a year old. We have orders to call and make an appointment for then and he'll check to see that the hole, and the resulting murmur, have completely disappeared.
She now weighs 12 pounds and is 23 3/4 inches long - 97th percentile for weight, 90th for height. Her skull circumference is also in the 97th percentile. I'm guessing that means she got a Fitzgerald-sized skull. That probably explains my C-section.
Marah has another doctor's appointment in two months for her next round of shots. I'll have the Tylenol at the ready.

I decided to play around with blogger and see what I could do to make this a little more homey. Isn't the new graphic nice? I do good work.