Bonjour!

Bluet, c'est tres chic et tres belle!

Mais, ou est le beret?

4 Month Vital Statistics

As we may have mentioned, Bluet is now 4 months old. It turns out it is difficult to find time to put everything she does on the blog (I had no idea a baby would take up so much time, and do so many things). So today, here is her 4 month (and a bit) celebratory video. As you can see she is now very active and lively, and loves standing up (an important milestone, showing Bluet is very advanced for her age).

In today's big news, Bluet went for her 4 month check up and vaccinations (so she can benefit from and contribute to herd immunity). The nurse took her measurements and showed them to the paediatrician, who could not believe her head had got so big in just two months - they had to measure it again to be sure. Fortunately her weight and length are in proportion to her head, so she is totally normal, if above average in size*. She then had her injections which made her scream (and everyone sad to see her so upset). But that soon passed. By the time I got home from work, she was happy as anything, as you can see in the following photo (note the attractive plasters over the injected areas).

*She is in the 93rd -95th percentile for everything. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this means that if you got all the 4 month old babies to stand in a row in order of height (or head size), she'd be very near the front.

Missouri miscellaneous

Rides on the golf cart are a regular activity on the farm and
it turns out that Bluet is just as entertained by this as everyone
else in the family (the dogs like it so much that they even go
on utility rides with my mom to transport lawn chairs). Here
we are, on the last ride of the last day of our recent visit.

The day everything became hilarious

Bluet was 4 months old on Wednesday, but we were so busy laughing at her laughing that we didn't have time to make a sign to record this for posterity. It's possible that documentation of 4 months and a few days will be forthcoming.

100 Years of Swampitude

Emily and Bluet's family have been farming the same farm in Missouri for 100 years, which calls for a celebration. So this weekend we were down on the farm, partying. In 100 years, I suspect that Bluet and her American cousins will be flying in from Mars on their space cars to celebrate 200 years of the same family farming Swampeast Acres. Of course, by then they will be farming space foods and selling them to some intergalactic federation, rather than soy beans to the Japanese, but that's progress for you.

Anyway, here are some pics and videos

Happy baby on the plane

Happy Baby in the car

Incoming storm (the night before the party)

Bluet has a Boulevard through the woods

Bluet Sleeping

Bluet slept through most of the party

More sleeping

Stopped for lunch on the way home

At the airport

Bonus Videos!

back to work

I'm working full days again and have been missing
my baby this week! Her nanny is very sweet and often
brings her to the park across the street from
Sloan-Kettering so I can see her around lunchtime.
I guess I'm lucky to have always liked my work, and
have never really been that eager to leave the lab,
but now find myself happily hurrying along the sidewalk
with the rest of the rat pack at 5:30.

This photo is what I came home to on Monday...as the
day wears on, Bluet sucks her thumb more and more and
we know this is a sign that she is getting tired. No
naptimes at that time of day though, and I was so happy
when I realized that taking her to Central Park is the
perfect antidote to her almost daily late afternoon
fussiness. Typically all three of us are relieved when
the hour reaches 7 pm, and we feed her, play with her
as long as she's happy, give her a bath, read her a book
and put her to bed. She loves to go to bed, just like her
mom. You can see her relief when her blanket touches her
hands and face - it's very cute.

3,000 Hits

Ok, here is the long awaited 3,000 hits post. I assume we are the first website to ever reach 3,000 hits, and not like the 28th website to reach 3,000 hits, because if we were only 28th that would not be worth celebrating.*

*this is a baseball joke, about the media fuss over Derek Jeter becoming the 28th player ever to reach 3,000 hits, which was ridiculous. After all, everyone knows the name of the first man on the moon, but who cares who the 28th man on the moon was?

Anyway, here are some hand picked classics never before seen from the extensive Bluet archive. One day they will probably have pride of place in her presidential library. So here you can once again see what Bluet used to look like, when she was young and small and sweet, as opposed to today when she is a little bit older, a little bigger, and just as sweet. To be honest she is a bit more wrinkly than I remember.

Also, from today, Bluet reading her book (she is now looking at the pictures). This is very exciting as soon we will be able to read her such children's classics as 'the giant jam sandwich', 'The Jolly Postman', 'The very hungry Caterpillar' (a presidential favourite), 'Tootles the Taxi' (a favourite of Uncle Nick), and, best of all, the re-issued complete Mr Benn

Swings, day 2