Nineteen and a half weeks. No, she isn't actually sitting up on her own, but is propped up against the arm of the couch. She had her 4 month check-up on Friday, and is now 25 1/2 inches, and 12 lbs 2 oz. She got another round of shots, and then Saturday had a slight fever. Of course, it was also 96 degrees and humid, so she was really unhappy. She got two baths and two rides in the car to cool off. Sunday was much better, after the fever had gone away and some massive thunderstorms coold things off (we lost power for 5 hours on Saturday night, from 8:30 pm to 1:30 am).

We've also been working on getting her to nap, which is something of a challenge but we're making progress. We've seen some improvement already, with her able to get herself back to sleep at night on her own, which is a huge plus.

Baby rice. Today, Emma finally had some baby rice, her first real solid food (or at least semi-solid). She screamed when the spoon wasn't in her mouth, but liked the rice cereal. This was not the case before when we tried this before (photos below).

These photos were followed up by horrible screaming in terror, like we were trying to poison her. The cereal was a national brand (not recalled), and we tasted it and the flavor was bad, with a distinct taste of vitamins. The version we gave her today, and that she liked, was a national organic brand. We tasted it first, and it was fine, if a little bland, but I guess that's reasonable for rice.

In other news, we've had a lot of visitors, including the Krauses from Oklahoma:

And my brother and his family in from Michigan (they have been in Uruguay for the last year, so we haven't seen them for a while)

The elusive smile. I finally got a picture of Emma smiling when we were in Orlando.


Orlando? Yep. I went to a conference (why else do I travel anywhere?), and we all went. Here she is on the plane in her carseat, happily sleeping. Or perhaps we were happy she was sleeping. Except for a little fussiness on the first leg of the trip, she was great everywhere, on the planes, the bus, and at the hotel room. She even slept during the day.


Most of the time I was in the conference, but they had a special deal for conference goers for discounted tickets after 4:00 pm. So, we went to Epcot on the last day of the sessions when things ended by 4, and had a very nice time. We ate at a fabulous Moroccan restaurant, and heard the fireworks but didn't see them, which was ok given how loud they were even inside a masonry building fairly far from the launch site. We also got a little time at the pool, which was nice.