Dorrie’s High-Altitude Blog

I get this question a lot, and I generally don’t explain why, but I will for No.1 on my list of weird things.

A good portion of the time I am frustratingly unable to control my own head, so sometimes it will look like I am nodding “no” when I am really not.

I have an essential tremor, which affects the movements of my head.  It’s called a “movement disorder” and is somewhat similar to Parkinson’s disease.  My tremor is genetic, my mother has it and she can remember an uncle having a tremor as well.  Catherine Hepburn had the same condition towards the end of her life; it’s noticeable in “On Golden Pond”.

Sometime in my mid-twenties I began to notice that sometimes when I read a book or watched t.v., my head would move in a “no-no” fashion, without my control.  At first, it didn’t bother me much and was not generally noticeable, so I simply discounted it as nothing to be worried about.

When I was 27 however,  I moved from my home town to Denver and the tremor became much more noticeable.  I was stressed at the time, adapting to a new city, living with my sister, and was working as a temp.  The movement of my head became so violent and uncontrollable that I was at times unable to read a book because my head would move so much that I could not focus on the pages.

I finally went to see a doctor about the problem and was fortunate enough to have a doctor who recognized what was wrong.  (My mother’s is very slight and she has never had it diagnosed, so I did not know what it was, even if my mother had the same thing.) He explained that an essential tremor is similar to Parkinson’s and epilepsy in that all of them involve some sort of electrical mis-firings in the brain.  For me, this misfiring affects the side to side movement of my head; the more the mis-firings occur, the more my head moves back and forth.

Since essential tremor is similar to epilepsy, my doctor and I began first to try medications used to treat epilepsy to see if they would help.  After those made me nauseous and tired, we tried a whole bunch of different medications over the course of several years in an attempt to find one that worked and that did not make me sick.

The tremor was still pretty bad during this “medication trial” period and it caused me to shy away from contact with other people.  I rarely went out or sought out friends and when I did I generally spent the entire time trying to mitigate the tremor by resting my chin on my hand and by avoiding face-to-face conversations.

I searched for and found a tremor support group at a local hospital and went with the expectation that I would meet some new friends.  Instead, I found a room of people all over the age of 70, except for one woman who turned out to be there to discuss the tremor of her adopted daughter.  A neurologist was speaking at the meeting about a new brain surgery that had been shown to help with tremor symptoms.  During his lecture the doctor stated that tremor was generally a condition of older people and, while looking directly at me, said “If the tremor starts when you are young it is only going to get worse as you get older.”  That was the end of my visits to the support group.

By the time my high school reunion rolled around I had found a medication that was able to help with the tremor and did not make me sick.  However, it could not diminish the tremor in situations when I was nervous and because the medication’s main use was the lowering of blood pressure, it had caused me to gain a lot of weight.  I had gained about 50 lbs, both due to the medication and honestly, because I was low on self esteem but not on potato chips.

While I really wanted to go to the reunion and see some of my friends, I simply couldn’t get the courage up to go.  I was certainly never popular or well-liked in high school, and so had hoped to at least go the reunion a “better” person that could wow everyone with how great I had turned out to be.  Instead, I was overweight, single, with no real career and couldn’t control my head.   For my own self-esteem I stayed home and missed seeing my friends.

As the years passed and the medication built up in my system the tremor became less noticeable.  I also learned to avoid caffeine, and learned that the tremor was worse when I was overtired.  By the time I met my husband the tremor was only slightly noticeable and by our third date I was able to talk to Mike about the tremor.  He’s such a great guy that he went out and researched it himself.

Last year I had to stop the tremor medication since Mike and I were trying to get pregnant and it was not a drug I could be on while I was pregnant.  I was really nervous about going off the medication, since it been many years that I had been on it and my tremor was somewhat under control.

In the end, even without the medication the tremor was only slight; sometimes people would ask why I was nodding “no” and I would not have noticed the tremor occurring.  I am still unable to talk about the tremor to most people who ask, it’s really embarrassing for me since it seems like I am nodding my head of my own volition when I am really not.  It’s strange and frustrating to not be able to control your own body, especially my head, since it’s movements are not something I can hide during a conversation.

On the other hand, it’s been a year since I took any tremor medication and I have not had any episodes as bad as when I was in my twenties.  I keep my fingers crossed that my tremor will stay slight without the need for medication and that I can finally start to lose some of this weight…

Unlike Tori I have no style (unless “Mommy Slovenliness” is style).  But even if I can’t get more than a matching pair of sweatpants and shirt together, I can make my daughter look good.

The other day I went shopping for clothes for Anna at Goodwill.  Unless you have a lot of money, it’s silly to spend a lot on clothes for someone who will outgrow them in less than 3 months.  Goodwill has infant clothes for $0.99 each, which is nicely within my budget.

I was overjoyed to find a coat that matched a hat that Rena sent for Anna.  Yesterday, it was a little cool so before I took Anna and Cash out on the morning walk, I dressed her warmly in her new coat and hat.

Rena's Hat

See? I do have some ability to match clothes items, just not on myself.

This should be especially impressive considering that Anna woke me up every two hours on Wednesday night.  She is showcasing her newly acquired ability to roll over from her back to her tummy on her right side.  She likes to wake up, roll over, and then get upset that she’s on her tummy.  This means that I have to go in and roll her back over and then comfort her until she stops crying.   There has barely been any sleep here and yet I was still able to match up a hat and coat.  Impressive no?

I don’t think that it’s possible to be a neat-freak and be a parent.  You will simply have to let go having everything neat and tidy, especially the baby and you.  Everyone is going to get messy in this process.

For example:

Messy Girl

What you are not able to see in this picture is that not only is her entire face covered in rice cereal, but there’s a lot under her chin, and more on her hands and on her legs.

We decided it wasn’t prudent to feed Anna in the high chair, since she looks like a dwarf princess on a giant’s throne in it, and she wasn’t really liking sitting up.  So, we opted to feed Anna her rice cereal in the bouncy chair.

The problem is that the chair is well, bouncy, so while Anna eats she kicks and bounces in the chair.  This means that while we are trying to feed her she is a moving target.  That, plus the fact that Anna spits out about half of what I put in her mouth, and she keeps trying to take the spoon from me and feed herself, makes this a very messy endeavor.

My father aptly calls rice cereal “library paste” and he’s quite right.  Trying to get this stuff off Anna is like trying to get dried Elmer’s glue off her face.  And since she is again, a moving target during the face wash, I have often thought I got it all off, only to go in for a kiss and find that there are still rice cereal chunks all over her face.

Fortunately, while I was once sort of a neat freak, I let that go when Anna was probably two weeks old when I had to live with spit-up in my hair on a daily basis.  Parenting forces you to evolve…

Whoohoo! It’s update time!

1. Today Anna is 5 months old.  She’s very different from the baby that I gave birth to 5 months ago.  She talks (well, baby talks), laughs, concentrates on things and is working hard on rolling over.  It’s been a roller coaster, but it’s definitely fun to watch a little person develop.  And damn she’s cute.  We took this picture of her when we visited Nate and Laura on the 23rd.

Anna in her cherry dress

2. While I watched my mom on her road to recovery from her medical nightmare this spring, I decided that the gauge for my mom being 100% was her return to swimming.  This week I finally got that 100% proof.  My mom called me on Tuesday to say that not only did she go to the pool and swim, but afterwards she took the dog on a walk around Prospect Lake, which is right next to the pool.  This is really remarkable considering that 6 months ago she could barely walk.  I’m so proud of her.  This week she’s going on her first trip; driving to the Sandhills with her friend Jan and going to some quilt museums in Nebraska.  I’m sure that they will have a great time and my mom will enjoy being out and about.

3. Last weekend Mike and I got my grandfather’s truck.  It’s a huge 1993 GMC Sierra with a camper top with, I’m scared to say it, a 34 gallon tank.  After my grandfather died my grandmother didn’t want the truck and at the time Mike and I discussed that it might be nice to have since we were doing a lot of landscaping at the time.  Last November my dad and Uncle Ted drove the truck out from Oregon to my uncle’s home in Wyoming where it has been sitting in the garage until now.  We’re not doing too much landscaping anymore, so I’m not sure how much use it’s going to get.  On the other hand, the truck smells like my grandfather; it’s like driving with Grandpa in a way.  The other day Grandpa and I went to Home Depot and then a few days after that Grandpa and I took my sister for a ride in the truck when she was having a bad day.  We were both a little comforted by the presence of Grandpa in the truck with us; I may spend time just sitting in it and remembering him.

4. This week marked the return of the hockey stud that I married.  Before we were married, when Mike was playing hockey much more regularly, I could count on him to score at least one goal each game.  This week Mike came from his 10 p.m. game on Tuesday with two goals.  Very cool!  I’m sure he’s having a good time and enjoying getting back to his favorite sport.

5. It’s no secret, I love ice cream.  This week was good for my love of ice cream, bad for my thighs… I discovered that one of my favorite local ice cream shops, Liks, which originally was only located in Capitol Hill, has branched out.  They have a new shop that is only a few miles away.  I went to the new store and got a few pints, and then saw a sign that Liks is available at King Soopers, our local grocery store chain.  The next day I went to the grocery store and found that I can indeed buy a few flavors of Liks there as well.  Whoohoo!

My other good/bad discovery is that Gelazzi, a really great gelato place that is downtown on Larimer, has also opened a new location close by.  This one is even closer than the Liks.  I haven’t been there yet, but I think this weekend we might need to make a family trip there for some gelato.  Maybe when Anna is bigger we can make a family bike trip there and I can work off 1/4 of the calories I will consume.

6. I’m considering taking down the Denver RRC website.  It’s not getting any use since I don’t have the time or the money to review restaurants anymore.  But I don’t want to lose the recipes that I have put up on the site either.  I’m considering either creating dorriemunhall.com/recipes or just sprinkling the recipes in with the normal blog.  What do you guys think?

I am finally down to the last 3 “Weird/Interesting Things About Dorrie”.  I have a draft of the “No.1″ on the list in my head, and I can tell right now that it’s going to take me a while to complete.  In the interest of time I’m going to combine 3 and 2 and just do short bits on each one.

3. The Last Insect Post

I promise this is the last one about insects and their deaths Rena!

When I was 5 I took a tick to my Kindergarten “Show and Tell”. When I was a little girl I really liked bugs a lot and was fascinated with them.  I was even taken with the tick that my dad pulled off my head.  We had been camping the weekend before and I had apparently brought home a friend in amongst my hair.  When it was discovered that I had a tick on my head my father quickly picked it off with a pair of tweezers.  But, being the weird little kid that I was, I made him put it in a plastic bag for me to take to school.  I proudly showed it off to the class saying “This was on my head.”

2. Paper towels

This is definitely the weirdest thing about me, but I hate paper towels.  It’s the texture and the noise that paper towels make when people use them.  For some reason, when I, or someone within my hearing, rubs their hands on a paper towel, the noise made by the paper towel makes my skin crawl.  When I was younger I wouldn’t even touch paper towels; there is just something about how rough they feel.  I’ve gotten over not being able to touch them, but every once in a while, when I hear someone drying their hands on a paper towel I still get a tingle in my spine.  It’s weird, I know!

I began this list as “10 Weird/Interesting Things About Dorrie”. So far, it’s been mostly weird things, generally involving insects (which is strange in itself).

I thought I would try writing about something that’s more interesting than it is weird.

Once, a long time ago, I loved words.  I loved the way certain words sounded and I loved stringing them together to make something beautiful.  Once I was a poet.

I “published” my first poem when I was in 8th grade.  I say “published” because it was a kids magazine that was printed and circulated only in my home town.  Nonetheless, I was very proud of it; it was a poem about imagination and it was called “Women and Children First”.

During that time I wrote a lot of poetry; to the point of always having a separate notebook with me just for my writings.  Where I went to high school each year a collection of student poetry, stories and art would be published - “Echoes”.  For all three years of high school I had at least one poem, if not several, in Echoes.

I really thought I was going to be a poet, and I read a lot of poetry then as well.  For my high school graduation present to myself, I bought the Complete Poems of E.E. Cummings, my favorite poet, and read almost every page.

Where I went to college for the first three years, Lawrence University, there was a similar collection of student work called “Tropos”.  As in high school I was able to have at least one poem in Tropos for each of those three years.

And then for some reason, the poems stopped.  Honestly, I have no idea why or when, but I stopped thinking about words, stopped writing poems in my head and stopped keeping a poetry notebook.

When I think about why I don’t write poetry anymore it’s a strange feeling that comes over me.  It’s hard to describe, but it feels like an envelope closing inside my chest; as if once there was a place where the words came from inside me, and now it’s closed.

When I look back at the poems I wrote and published, I think some of them are the typical crap written by an angst-ridden teenager.  I suppose that a lot of people go through a poetry writing phase in their teen years; it’s an art that is sometimes driven by depression, and well, teenagers are a hormonal, depressed bunch.

But there are a few of my old poems that I still find beautiful.  Here’s one of them:

Topic

to tickle the lollipop of the sunset
to cling to ambrosia twine
between the stars
to find sanctuary in Beloved Moon
where time is arabesque in its lines
to be so long amaranthine
where why is no longer a question
where smooth is more than touch
but a place to think
to put beauty upon the shelf
and begin again with ethereal
where words are the pin cushion
of some vast seamstress
whose cloth is woven
of me’s and you’s
and mixed with the colors of a bubble
on the brink of popping
to say to the children
gathered at one’s feet
these are the flowers
that grow on the tips of fairy noses

such
is life
for the poet laureate
upon a rose petal

Just a quick blog about the choice of Sarah Palin for McCain’s running mate…

The choice of a female running mate on the GOP ticket is certainly a very interesting one.  But it’s very obvious that this was a choice made specifically to bring over disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters.  For me, there seems no other way to see this move.

I am sort of fascinated to see if this works for McCain or if it backfires on him with the true party conservatives.

I myself hope that all of the disgruntled Hillary supporters truly listened to Hillary on Tuesday night when she said, “Were you in it for me?”  Because when it comes down to it, a woman in the Republican party is still a Republican; just a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

McCain’s campaign must be hoping that we pay no attention to that man behind the female VP candidate.

Update! Update! Another Update!

Here is a review of the exciting and not-so exciting things going on here at the House of Munhall.

1. We took Anna to the pediatric opthalmalogist on Wednesday to see if she has a lazy right eye.  After an hour and a half long appointment and three sets of eye drops to dialate her eyes, we were told she does not have a lazy eye.  It’s apparently a “pseudo” lazy eye, but they want us to have her checked again in 6 months anyway.  Here’s the weird part though - we saw a Dr. Steele, a nice, but not terribly friendly, woman who looked like she was about 8 months pregnant.  When we were walking out with our paperwork I did a double take when I realized that the doctor’s name was Anna and her middle initial was L, just like our Anna.

2. Mike gave Anna her first cold and me my second cold in two weeks.  It’s lovely when we can all share these things as a family.  Anna was pretty congested, but with lots of baths, the humidifier cranked up and the elevation of her crib mattress we kept it to a minimum. She seems to be pretty much over it by now.  Just so you know, if your baby sneezes out a lot of snot, you need to be very quick with the Kleenex.  I learned this the hard way after watching Anna sneeze once; I guess the sweet little thing thought  “Oh, what’s that on my lip? I should taste that and see.” and before I knew it, it was gone….

3. I went to see my eye doctor today about some redness in my left eye.  Turns out I have lots of sun damage from when I was a child and one area of damage is irritated.  No more contacts for a while for me and lots of eye drops.  The doctor said, “I bet you spent a lot of time outside when you were a kid.”  I did actually; I rarely came inside for anything.  Once, my mother put me down for a nap right before some of her friends were due to come over for tea.  They were just beginning their tour of the backyard when they found me halfway out my window on my way out to play.  Oops!

4. On Saturday we went up to Laura and Nate’s for a lunchtime visit.  The drive up to their house was so green we thought we were lost; we’re pretty used to it being snow covered.  Cash came along too and as usual, Duke spent the entire time showing Cash how much Duke loves him. We got to taste some of Nate’s latest brewing adventures, some grilled meat and veggies and yummy peach pie.  Nate is making some great alcohol, including a lovely apple cider and a peach beer. Do these count as fruit servings?  I hope so, because I had two!  Mike and I each had second helpings of the peach pie that Laura made - so that in the end, there was no more pie when we left. Oh, and I helped to finish both the vanilla and the butter pecan ice cream.  See how helpful I am?

5. Because the DNC is in town, Mike’s office decided that everyone could work from home this week. The DNC doesn’t really affect Mike, except that some of the train stations closest to his office are closed, but it’s nice to have him home. Anna and I do pretty good at pretending that he’s at work - but not always.  Sometimes, Anna says, “Hey, I want to show Daddy how good I am at drooling today.” and really who can say “no” to her cute self?

Okay, back to the weird/interesting things about Dorrie list. Here’s number 5.

I am proud to say that once, I was hit in the head by an ape.

In college I majored in anthropology, which has a few areas from which to choose your focus.  Anthropology includes cultural anthropology - where you can do a Margaret Mead thing and go live with the natives, and archaeology - where you spend days using a paint brush in the dirt to reveal ancient trash.  There is also forensic anthropology - the study of human bones, and evolutionary anthropology - where you learn that you can call someone “Australopithecus” and they won’t know that you are calling them “Ape Man”.  The other area of anthropology is primatology - the study of primates.

I was really fascinated with forensic anthropology and I had a great professor who was a nationally known expert.  While I was a student he helped to identify the remains of a 12-year old girl who had been murdered and dumped in the mountains by her neighbor.  But I decided my junior year to focus on primatology.

In order to complete the graduation requirements the anthropology department at Colorado College requires that you do one of two things.  Either take a test about all of the areas of anthropology or complete a research thesis documented with a paper and a presentation.  I chose the thesis because I have never been a good test taker; I’m a much better writer.

For my thesis I chose to focus on gibbons and their calls.  Gibbons are a “lesser” ape (in contrast to Gorillas for example, which are a “Greater” ape), native to Borneo and Sumatra.  Gibbons spend almost all of their lives in the trees, they live in family groups of mom, pop and babies, with each family having their own territory.  In the wild, each morning the male and female gibbon do a series of calls while circling the edges of their territory in sort of a “this is our house” statement. I found a YouTube video of a female gibbon so that you can hear an example of what gibbons sound like when they call.

During the morning call session the male and female have very specific parts; it’s as if it’s a scripted song.  For my thesis I wanted to research whether captive gibbons do the same calls and if they do if it’s the same as the calls that wild gibbons perform each morning.

I studied three pairs of White-handed gibbons at three different zoos.  Spike and Ebony at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Rocket and Suzy at the Heritage Zoo (in Grand Island, Nebraska), and Ralph and Lucky at Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha.  Of these gibbons, only Ralph was born in the wild.

Studying gibbon calls means that you arrive at the zoo by dawn - since that’s when the calls start and spend all day observing them.  I would bring a chair, a tape recorder, and a special form to take down every move that the gibbons made under my observation. When they moved, I wrote down what they were doing and for how long.

Just as a side note, being outside all day writing down gibbon movement during the summer in Nebraska has two downsides: a) It’s freaking hot - like 105 degrees with 100% humidity, and, b) Gibbons, being pretty intelligent, know that the best thing to do when it’s hot is too sleep in the shade.  I spent hours writing “sleeping” on my observation notes when all I wanted to do was find air conditioning.

I discovered that gibbons perform pretty much the same calls in captivity as they do in the wild - which was good since that was my hypothesis. The male and females sang their parts at exactly the same time each morning and didn’t really deviate from the song performed in the wild.

I also discovered that you can very easily piss off a male gibbon if you mess with his baby.  Rocket and Suzy, the pair in Grand Island, had a cute 1-year old baby named Bubba Sue.  (Don’t ask, because I do not know the logic on the silly name.)  At the zoo I was allowed to sit next to the cage within a few feet of the gibbons.  One day Bubba Sue was playing in the cage near me and decided that a small piece of metal wire would be the perfect thing to put in her mouth.  Rocket and Suzy were at the other end of the cage and I didn’t want Bubba Sue to be hurt by the piece of wire.  So, without thinking, I leaned over to take the piece of wire from Bubba Sue.

Here’s the problem, gibbons have really long arms, and can swing 30 feet in one swing.  I was just grabbing the piece of wire from Bubba Sue when I got smacked on the back of my head - hard.  Rocket did not take too kindly to me being close to the baby and in the space of a few seconds had swung across the cage, reached out and taken a good swipe at my head.

Thankfully Rocket wasn’t close enough to bite me, because he would have if he had the chance and gibbons have nice, sharp teeth. And really, I think “once I was hit in the head by an ape”, sounds so much better than “I lost my three of my fingers in an incident with an angry gibbon”, don’t you?

Here’s the news from my little corner from this last week (in no particular order).

1.  I’m over the cold thankfully.  I was well enough to attend a ladies night planned by ElleBee (thank you ElleBee!).  We hung out at The Hornet, talked, ate and drank cider (at least Ellebee and I drank cider).  It was absolutely lovely to sit and have adult conversation.   The Hornet makes a lovely Guinness battered fish and chips that I just had to have - yippee for deep fat fried goodness!  There was a discussion that I spend far too much time on my blog telling about the bad stuff of parenthood (apparently the diaper post was a little scary for ElleBee).  So I’m drafting a post about the good stuff that comes with being Anna’s mom.

2. Mike updated my WordPress version for my blog.  It’s a much nicer interface on the backend, but it meant that I had to change my theme.  I’m not really liking the new theme very much, but it was the only one that I had on reserve that didn’t make the Blogroll and the categories look screwy.  I’ll be looking for new themes sometime soon.

3. My mom’s birthday was Friday and she and my dad ventured up from the Springs to celebrate.  I made my mom a chocolate chip cake that she loves and a simple dinner of baked potatoes and corn chowder.  The winter meal seemed fitting since it rained all day Friday and the high was in the 50’s.  I gave her the earrings I got for her from Sundance Moods (lovely blue iolite and pearls), which she loved.  My sister gave her a camera for her computer, which we will hook up for mom, so that she can talk to Anna and my nephew whenever she wants.

4. My cousin John from Portland was in town this weekend.  John is the youngest son of my mom’s brother Tom and I have not seen him in 15 years, at least.  Unfortunately, I was only able to see him for a few minutes since he could only meet around the same time that our Childbirth Preparation Class Reunion was planned.  John is a younger version of my grandfather Tom, with a lean lanky build and a thin patch of red hair and red goatee.  The weirdest part is that he smells exactly like my grandfather does.  I have a tendency to notice the particular smell that people have and it was strange to be hugging my cousin, but smelling my grandfather.

5. Mike and I really thought that Anna was going through a growth spurt a few weeks ago.  It seemed like a logical conclusion when two weeks ago she began demanding food every 2-3 hours (at least), even at night.  Previous to that Anna would go for a nice 5-6 hour stretch after we put her to bed.  Now that it has been two weeks of this, I’m not sure if this is a growth spurt after all.  Being up three or four times a night was something I had hoped was in the past for me, but I was, as usual, forgetful of the “roll with the punches” life of a parent.

6. We finally hosted our Childbirth Preparation Class Reunion at our house this weekend.  Two other couples and our teacher were able to show up and bring their babies.  We were missing two more couples and three babies, but I think I will try to organize another get together soon since this one was so fun.  Our teacher wanted to hold babies, hear birth stories and asked questions about how things were going now.  It was great to hang out with parents of kids almost exactly Anna’s age (Anna is the oldest by a few weeks).  I am so immersed in my world with Anna that I forget what other babies can be like at the same time.  One boy was not very active and just wanted to be held; his lucky mother said that he sleeps from 8 p.m. to 5:30 a.m.  The other boy was active, but unfortunately very fussy - so much so that his poor mom said, “My child should make other parents feel good about their babies.”  I showed his parents a little better swaddling technique that seemed to calm him down and Mike played Anna’s favorite motorcycle game with him.  We sent them home with the “Happiest Baby on the Block” video from which we had learned the tight swaddle in the hopes that we could help them calm the fussing.

7. Tuesday Anna and I spent the day at our friend Kristen’s house.  Kristen has recently broken her foot and needs help with her one-year old, Evan.  There were times when I had to hold both of them and other times when I had to change two diapers in a row.  How do those people with twins manage?

8. Wednesday my sister and I went to a meeting of the “Liberal Ladies of Highlands Ranch”.  Sadly, there were only five of us, but it’s a start.  The other women in the group are a little more active politically and are, like ElleBee, volunteering for the DNC.  One woman has been campaigning for Obama and told us a story of being escorted out of a Lone Tree neighborhood by the police because someone objected to their presence.  I have no idea why, but the suburbs seem to be the place where Republican’s have gone to breed and frankly sometimes I feel a little choked by the conservatives in our area.  It was nice to meet with other like-minded women and finally see that we are not the only Democrats in Highlands Ranch.

9. We started Anna on rice cereal this week.

Anna tries rice cereal

Here she is looking at the bowl from her high chair.  Mike and I put her in the high chair only to discover that she is a tiny little girl in comparison to her high chair - and that we can’t adjust the tray level.  We spent a lot of time laughing at the poor thing staring at us from her perch.  Anyway, we are trying out the rice cereal in small bouts.  So far most of it ends up on her chin and on her bib.  Until she gets the hang of swallowing something on her tongue, feedings will be immediately followed by a bath.