Last set of vacation photos

A park near our friends' house in Minneapolis provided entertainment for Claire and Isabel (and all the adults!) They had a free wading pool (zero inches to 2 feet) where Claire got her feet wet:

Here are some other pictures of Claire and Isabel at the park:





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Claire and Isabel

Claire met our friends' daughter Isabel this past weekend. Isabel is 21 months old and lives in San Diego. She was Will's and my "practice baby" before her parents moved. I guess we didn't mess her up too badly because she's still pretty cute and even talking now.

She are Claire got along pretty well. Luckily, Claire isn't old enough to care if someone takes her toys from her because Isabel isn't quite to an age where she understands the concept of sharing and they both liked the same sort of toys...

It was fun to be able to combine visits to see family and friends in the same trip.

Here are a few pictures:







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Bathtime

Since the bathtub on vacation was extra deep, it was easier to give Claire a bath in the tub with her. I think she enjoyed it.



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Back from Mini-vacation

We spent four days in the Minneapolis area visiting family and friends. More pictures will follow when I get around to it. For now, here are a few to start with:

This is Claire and her second cousin William. (Will's cousin's baby) They were both born on the exact same day! And yes, his arms really are the same size around as her legs.

Claire was completely better by the day before our trip and she traveled very well.

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Better

Claire is much better today. Yesterday she still had a fever in the morning, so she was back at the Doctor's office, as per the doctor's instructions on Tuesday. After drawing some blood (I was surprised that they draw blood from babies from the same place in the arm as they draw from adults) they said that her blood cell counts were a bit high, so she probably had some sort of bacterial infection and to give her antibiotics.

As a scientist, I was a bit underwhelmed by the scientific evidence and sort of had a feeling they were just giving us the antibiotic to "do" something. But as a parent, I was kind of scared with my baby's first illness and wanted her to get better.

She is getting better. The timing of her improvement hasn't made it clear if it really was a bacterial infection or if she just had a virus that she is now finally getting over. My scientific self wishes I would have waited one more day or at least another 8 hours before starting the antibiotic to see if she would have gotten better on her own. Then we could have avoided the drug completely. However, now that she's started it, she has to finish it, or risk antibiotic-resistant bugs evolving. So, we are stuck trying to get her to take 3.25 mL of bubble-gum flavored liquid twice a day, which, contrary to what the pharmacist said, she does not like.

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Un-well-child visit

Yesterday Claire had her first visit to the doctor's office because of being sick. We suspected something might be going on Monday, when she napped for 3 hours in the morning, and then another 3 hours in the afternoon. (usually, she only naps for 3-4 hours total during the day!) Then, Tuesday morning she woke up with a mild fever. After her first nap, which was 2.5 hours, her temperature was 103.5, so Will took her into the urgent care at our clinic. They did a strep test, but that was negative. So basically they just told us to give her Tylenol and Ibuprofen and bring her back in a couple days if she wasn't better. A friend told me that babies get quite high fevers very frequently with any sort of infection or virus. That doesn't make it less scary when it's the first time and your baby feels like she is burning up!

She seemed to be doing okay this morning, but she still had the fever in the middle of the night when she woke up. So we'll see what happens when the Tylenol wears off.

Here are a couple pictures of Claire in the past few days, when she was feeling better.

This is from when we went to Ella's Deli last week. There are a lot of moving toys flying through the air on wires. Claire enjoyed watching them.


This is Claire reading her favorite book at the moment "One Bear, One Dog." She likes it because the last page is a mirror and she now loves looking at pictures of herself and other babies. And likes to give them kisses.



Sometimes Claire picks positions to sleep that just don't look comfortable!
Claire spent part of Father's day listening to her dad play the guitar from the best seat in the house.

I'll post another update about how Claire is doing tomorrow.
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Happy Father's Day!

Happy Belated Father's Day to all the fathers out there.

Here's a slideshow of Claire to help celebrate. (thanks for the idea, Santos!)

Grandma Julie stopped by on her way East. Claire and Mom read the paper together, and Claire read some stories with Dad, among other things.

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Army Crawl!

Here's the video! It captures Claire's very first attempts and successes at forward motion, (we actually had the camera handy!) and then shows how she's already improved so much in two and a half weeks.

(I switched to Google Videos, because YouTube was taking hours to 'process' the video. Didn't Google buy YouTube anyway?)

I hope you like it!
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Trip to the Zoo

*New Video coming! Check back later today or tomorrow!

This weekend we went to the zoo and met our friends Matt, Kathy and Levi there. It was a beautiful day to walk around and see all the animals. Of course, Claire and Levi were more interested in looking at all the little kids running around than the animals on display.


Here we are by some of the bears.
This is one of the lakes in town near the zoo.

A real, live Wisconsin Badger!

This pelican was bullying the flamingos:


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Pictures from last week

Now that Claire can move on her own, she can get herself into some tight spaces.


Since this picture was taken, Claire has learned how to go from sitting to being on her stomach and moving (without a complete face plant. It's usually still a little bit of a belly flop, though. She's still working on it.)


A couple pictures of Claire in her red-footed farm outfit from Great Grandma and Great Grandpa K.

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Claire is 7 months old!

Claire turned 7 months old yesterday. We were in DBQ for a high school friend's wedding (picture coming soon). Grandma and Grandpa had to babysit while Will and I went to the wedding and reception; I could tell they hated that. Aunt Ellen and Uncle Greg were also around and Claire got to spend time with them too.

Here are some pictures from the trip and from the last week:











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