10 Pounds

I took Brooklyn in to the doctor for her regular 4 month checkup last week, and our tiny daughter is weighing in at a whopping 10 pounds. I think the boys each weighed this much within the first month, maybe two in Jeremy's case. I find it amazing that she's 4 months old, and still just barely getting into the 0-3 clothing size. I packed away her preemie and most of her newborn clothing with very bittersweet emotions. I absolutely love watching my children grow from a tiny seed inside my womb to walking, talking, free-thinking individuals. Somehow, though, the combination of Brooklyn being our only girl and also being our last child, is making all her milestones a little bit more difficult. At 4 months both of the boys were eating rice cereal every night, and I was looking forward to the days when they would move onto finger foods and being able to crawl. Brooklyn has been showing signs of readiness for solid food for the last couple of weeks, but when we attempted a small amount last week, she couldn't quite negotiate the spoon. After about 10 minutes of trying to get her to swallow a watery mixture of pureed carrots and rice cereal, I happily packed the rest of the baby food back into the cupboard. Solid food is just one more milestone that I will happily postpone.

In other news, we have recently had some car trouble. A few weeks ago, I had the van into Midas in order to get the oil changed, and was informed of several problems with the van. Some of them we knew about, or at least suspected, and a few were a surprise. We knew we needed new brakes, rotars, windshield wipers, and tires. We knew we had an oversized plug in our oil pan, but were unaware that there is also a small crack starting to form. At this point our oil pan isn't leaking, but at some point the entire oil pan will need to be removed and replaced, a venture that will cost several hundred dollars. In the last month, we replaced the brakes, rotars, water pump, and the timing belt. We have hopes for our tax refund allowing us to buy 4 new tires for the van and 2 new tires for Ammon's car. All in all, even though it is an expensive pasttime, we're grateful for the fact that we have two vehicles. On the way to the doctors office for Brooklyn's checkup last week, a warning light came on in the van. In light of our recent oil-pan discovery, I assumed the light was related to the oil pressure. The van limped the rest of the way to the doctors office, where it stayed for the next two days until I could make the arrangements to have it towed to Ammon's brothers house here in Cincinnati, and Russ, Jon, and Ammon could get together on Friday morning to check out the damage. The prevailing hope was that it would simply require a new oil pump, a venture of only $200, and wouldn't require a new engine, a venture that would cost closer to $1000. I stayed close to the phone on Friday morning, waiting for news about the van, and when Ammon called and asked me to describe precisely what the warning light looked like, I described it for him. Apparently the small automotive knowledge I possess does not extend to knowing what the symbol signaling an overheated engine looks like. Thankfully in this situation, my ignorance saved us a fair amount of money. Instead of an oil pump and possibly an engine, it simply required a new water pump and timing belt, which set us back a mere $75. All in all, I guess I've never been so pleased to be a nincompoop.