Steve and I went on our babymoon this past weekend. We were able to leave Josie with my folks and get away sans kids for what will be the last time for quite a while once the new one arrives. We went to Lincoln City, OR, for Friday night and then spent Saturday antique shopping in this nice beach town. We had a great time and were both exhausted. We found some nice things, including a Donald Duck nightlight/lamp for the nursery that is very similar to the Mickey one that is in Josie’s room. We headed to Spirit Mountain Casino for Saturday night. It’s no Reno, NV, but we had a good time. They have a nice, albeit small, non-smoking area that includes both slots and a few table games. We played some 3-card poker. I ended up $10 ahead and Steve doubled his $40. I then retired to our room for the evening (a very nice room indeed) and Steve headed to the poker room. That was about 8:30 PM. I didn’t hear from Steve again until I finally called him about 4:00 AM to find out where he was. I had been waking up every 30 minutes for the previous 2 hours waiting for him to come in.
Turns out he had just cashed in his chips and was heading up. He had made over $100 in the poker room, so he was having a very successful night. On his way up he decided to splurge and put $20 into a dollar slot machine. It takes $3 to play the maximum credits, so he played his money down to $5 with no luck and decided he’d go ahead one more time and leave with the $2 that was left. Thank goodness he’s not a chicken like me. I would have probably left much sooner, of course I probably wouldn’t have played a dollar machine anyway. On his next spin on the Triple Diamond Deluxe slot machine, he landed a “triple triple 7″ combination. The “triples” are wild and each one triples your payout. So, instead of winning $300, Steve had quite suddenly made $2700. I was pretty shocked when he told me the next morning. He didn’t think about having the slot attendant take his picture with the machine and the winning combo so the next morning we went down and I took his picture. It no longer has the combination on it but we know what it should have been. Pretty impressive, eh?
Besides our exciting weekend, we took Josie in for her 2-year checkup on Monday. Unbelievably, she weighed in at 21 pounds 10 ounces. We were so certain she was over 22 and maybe close to 23 pounds. Of course, she picked the last week to get very picky and eat very little. That is enough weight gain to keep her in the 3rd percentile. She is also 32 inches tall, which puts her in the 10th percentile. Developmentally she’s doing very well. She’s just very petite. We had a long talk with her doctor about her nutrition because she refuses to try new things and just wants to eat what we consider junk food (crackers, squeezie cheese, cereal bars, etc.).
The doctor gave us a lot of good suggestions and told us we need to get rid of the snack foods completely for now and basically force her into a better diet. We’ve hesitated to do that because we knew she’d stop eating (what a stubborn girl!) and we knew that would cause her to lose weight, which she can’t afford to do. But with the doctor’s permission, that’s what we’re doing. Monday night she refused to eat dinner and Tuesday lunch she refused to eat. Breakfast isn’t quite as bad because she will eat a bowl of cereal or waffles and pancakes. I guess she decided she was hungry enough last night though because she ate a whole waffle and while she was eating it she actually tried and ate 1.25 chicken nuggets. She even tried the raw carrots I put on her plate, which she’s refused in the past. We were ecstatic that it seemed we had made progress.
Of course, by lunch today, she was back to refusing. I made her a PB and J sandwich and even cut it into the shape of Mickey’s head and a star. She wouldn’t even try it or the apples slices, carrots, or grapes that were on her plate with PB to dip in. You would think she would be hungry by dinner tonight but we didn’t have the same luck as last night. She was thrilled to eat the waffle we put out but wouldn’t try the fruit, carrots, or chicken nugget. We also put out the sandwich from lunch which just made her scream. We’re going to try a different approach over the next few days so hopefully things will go smoother. One way or the other, she’s going to learn to eat real food at her meals and not just snacks. She may lose some weight in the process but in the long run she will be much healthier.
We’ll be going in to the Pediatrician plenty in the next year with the new baby so the doctor asked that we get her weighed on occasion so we can keep an eye on her growth. We also suspect she may have some reflux issues again so we’ve put her back on a reflux medication. Hopefully that will help as well.
Everything else is going well. We had our 32 week baby checkup yesterday and the heartbeat sounded great. We’ll go back in 2 weeks and then start weekly visits after that. Before we know it, we’ll have a new addition to our family. The past 8 months have gone so fast! Let’s hope we can get everything done that we need to before this little one decides to come out.
